Amazon is making Alexa smarter with natural turn-taking, having conversations with multiple people, natural language understanding, and the ability to be taught by customers. The first target is the smart home, but Alexa for Business is also likely to follow.
The Alexa overhaul and artificial intelligence improvements were outlined as Amazon launched its latest batch of Echo devices.
Amazon’s new Echo devices are evolving to be more smart home edge computing devices. For instance, Amazon’s Echo devices are using the company’s AZ1 Neural Edge processor with 20x less power, double the speech processing, and 85% lower memory usage.
That processor building block along with Amazon’s artificial intelligence advances are designed to make the Echo more ambient. Dave Limp, senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, said the new Echo devices are designed to make “moments count.”
Features such as Reading Sidekick, designed to help kids read, and conversational improvements are aimed at making Alexa more of a family member without as many “Alexa” words.
Rohit Prasad, vice president and head scientist for Alexa Artificial Intelligence at Amazon, outlined the following capabilities:
Alexa can take interaction cues and note errors and then connect them.
Learn from humans by asking to follow up questions when Alexa has a gap in knowledge about returns and learned modes.
Deep learning space parsers to understand gaps and extract new concepts.
More natural conversation and adaptation.
Follow-up mode when interacting with humans.
Prasad noted that Alexa can use visual and acoustic cues to determine the best action to take. “This natural turn-taking allows people to interact with Alexa at their own pace,” said Prasad.
By Larry Dignan | September 24, 2020