How Amazon’s Alexa is bringing intelligent assistance into the mainstream
Summary
Meanwhile, a large set of distant cousins – call them text ‘bots – understand “plain English” requests and can recommend restaurants, movies, or even bridal fashions. According to the “User Adoption Survey” commissioned by predictive speech analytics specialist MindMeld, use of voice-based intelligent assistants has reached a tipping point and is heading toward mass acceptance. More people are talking to their smartphones and making spoken queries in their automobiles and at home — through TV remotes, wireless speakers (Amazon Echo), and a variety of wearables — all of which is accelerating the adoption of IA. In addition to Echo’s expanding ecosystem, the pool of companies entering the IA field is growing, thanks to messaging platforms like Slack, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger. One is VoiceBox Technologies, which has been in the Voice User Interface (VUI) business for over a decade and has made significant inroads into the automotive and mobile entertainment domains, with partners or customers that include Toyota, Pioneer, Chrysler, Dodge, Renault, Fiat, and TomTom.
