The rhythmic clicking of keys has long been the drumbeat of the modern office, but another sound is joining it as more workers start talking to AI.
Whether it’s dictating a message, throwing ideas at an AI assistant or even vibe-coding, voice is becoming another way of getting thoughts into a computer — and Logitech ANZ believes our desk setups need to catch up.
There’s some evidence behind the argument.
According to Telsyte‘s Australian Artificial Intelligence Study 2026, 17.4 million Australians aged 16 and over now use AI. Typing remains overwhelmingly dominant, accounting for 80% of AI interactions, but voice already makes up the remaining 20%.
That’s a sizeable chunk for an input method many of us still feel slightly ridiculous using while sitting at a desk.
For Logitech, it also creates an obvious hardware question. If we’re going to spend more time talking to our computers rather than simply talking through them during Teams and Zoom calls, microphones and headsets suddenly have another job to do.
Marisol Vargas, Senior Category Portfolio Manager at Logitech Personal Workspace Solutions ANZ, argues that the attraction starts with something fairly basic: most of us can talk considerably faster than we can type.
“From the typewriter to the computer, our fingers have been expressing what we think for over a century,” says Vargas. “However, they can also present a bottleneck. People speak at 130 to 150 words per minute, almost triple the average typing speed.
“Being able to speak an idea directly onto the page removes a key layer of friction, but only if switching back and forth to keyboards is easy, and voice can be captured properly.
“Where once headsets and microphones were vital to meetings, now they’re key to opening up entire workflows at individual desks. Whether talking or typing, office workers looking into voice dictation software need to ensure they have hardware that works well across both. After all, AI is only as accurate as the audio it receives.”
There is an obvious commercial interest here. Logitech would quite like us to care about the microphones sitting on our desks, but the broader point is an interesting one.
Voice doesn’t need to replace the keyboard to become useful.
Speaking lends itself naturally to getting a first draft out of your head, brainstorming with an AI assistant or firing off a long prompt without turning it into a typing exercise. The keyboard remains considerably better suited to precise editing, data entry and the countless little corrections that follow.
Then there’s the human problem.
Talking to a computer at home is one thing. Doing it while surrounded by colleagues introduces questions around privacy, background noise and office etiquette that have little to do with how accurate the microphone happens to be.
Anyone who has endured a colleague conducting a loud Teams call from the next desk can probably imagine what an office full of people simultaneously prompting AI might sound like.
Vargas doesn’t see voice and keyboards as competing technologies.
“The keyboard did not replace the mouse, and nor will voice replace the keyboard,” she concludes. “Each is just a powerful new partner to help extend our potential through our senses – touch, voice, hearing and sight. The future of productivity isn’t touch or voice, but both, working in concert.”
That feels closer to where this is heading.
Twenty per cent voice interaction isn’t the death of the keyboard. Far from it. But as AI changes what we’re asking our computers to do, it may also change how we ask them to do it.
The bigger question might not be whether our computers are ready to listen.
It’s whether the rest of the office is ready to hear us.
