> But how? Even if those interfaces were actually working, it's still extremely inconvenient to talk when you can click

Working from home changes that. I can see many more opportunities for a multimodal input interface. Examples:

1. My fingertips now are closer to the "reply" button below this text area than they are even to the touchpad. Touching "reply" is half a second, moving one hand to the touchpad, aiming the pointer at the button and clicking takes longer. With a mouse: much longer. Anyway, my screen is not a touchscreen. I'll click.

2. Or, with an assistant, I could have said "Click reply", provided that the assistant knows where the focus is and that it can read the form I'm typing in.