Personal assistants

[Harrison Herring]

why is it, that every ai personal assistant, from the google home to the amazon echo and home pod, resembles something that belongs in a bathroom, or utility room, with the exception of the google home mini, which looks like a doughnut - the apple home pod, like a toilet roll, the google home, like an air freshener, the amazon echo dot, like a tin of shoe polish, and the big 'echo plus' like a roll of kitchen roll??? 

[WereCatf]

The form is partially dictated by the microphone-array; it's not just a single microphone there, but a whole bunch of them, so the device can determine the direction the audio is coming from and do some processing to filter out background-noise and transients and minimize echo for clarity.