Just mentioning; I think there is some shady controversy going on around ventoy with the project using unexplainable binary blobs in the source code or sometging.
At least there was a controversy at some point in time. It might be resolved now for all I know. Just be aware of it before you decide to use Ventoy.
I agree that the private assistant thing falls apart if only using a green/yellow, but O don't think that compute should be bolted on to these devices.
I have had an home assistant green for soon a year and it is great for what I need.
If I want the whole AI-thing I wpuld lile that to be run on a separate device that can be reached by the HA-green.
I'd say the simplicity, fully auto updates combined with the very low resource consumption is the USP.
Very hands off. Very lightweight.