How did Amazon's Alexa bring AI into people's kitchens and living rooms?
Amazon hid an AI assistant inside a wireless speaker - and accidentally created a whole new product category.
The answer
Amazon launched the Echo smart speaker and its Alexa voice assistant in November 2014 to invited customers and broadly in June 2015, despite widespread skepticism about whether people would talk to a device in their homes. Alexa was developed by a team of thousands, including former members of Amazon's text-to-speech and natural language understanding groups, building on technology from Evi Technologies (acquired in 2013) and Yap (acquired in 2011). By 2019, Amazon had sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices, and the Alexa Skills Kit allowed third-party developers to create over 100,000 'skills.' The Echo's success forced Google, Apple, and others to rush competing products to market.
Source: Amazon Science
- alexa
- voice assistants
- smart speakers
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