I havent really looked in depth to those ic's but the ones I have seen, are trivial that respond to a few words or that are built into existing microcontrollers which would then mean, learning that uC and getting some programmer.
This is more of a fun project to do and at the same time, help me learn more about the dspic. Since dsPics are readily available where I am, I have a programmer, I'm familiar with microchip, and a library exists that is somewhat flexible to various words, it seems to be the better choice for me.