Alexa will become an AI-powered chatbot after a major update

a Alexa voice assistant He will gain new skills and abilities from the major update that will be released by Amazon Next year. The idea is to bring chatbot technology closer to the existing market, similar to ChatGPT that it googlebardso that the bot understands the context of conversations better, provides better responses to users and is connected to more devices and systems.

The new features will enter the testing phase in 2024, both for those who already have devices from Echo line And also for new devices sold by Amazon. The company says it is working on Language model It focuses specifically on voice, with research focusing on the way users interact with devices and search for information in real time.

Alexa’s new conversational capabilities were showcased on Wednesday (20) at an Amazon event focused on its devices. The main difference that came to the stage was in the way the voice assistant interacts with the user, being able to understand the progress of the conversation and no longer requiring a lot of repetition of commands or individual requests to perform actions.

In a demo shown at an Amazon event, Alexa was able to recognize when Amazon’s director of product and services, Dave Limb, interrupted a conversation with her to address the audience. When returning to the chat, it was not necessary to draw the assistant’s attention, and the conversation continued without the need to bring up the topic again.

Technology should also be able to understand sentences more easily, understanding when a user makes a correction midway or wants to add an element to an ongoing conversation. On devices sound echo With the display and facial recognition, all you have to do is look at Alexa’s equipment to understand that it is time to speak, while the tone of speech should become less robotic and more natural depending on the content of the topic.

The update represents a shift in focus for Amazon

Among the changes that the giant company is working on is a new vision for the future of its voice assistant. As much as it depends on the sound, Lemp explains His improvement has always focused on displays; While Echo Line devices represent the main way to interact with Alexa, their development has been more focused on displays and mobile phones than on microphones and speakers.

This is now changing, the executive says, with the introduction of generative AI and a new machine learning paradigm being the key step in adding features to the technology. According to Amazon, there are five pillars of this new Alexa: conversations, real apps, personalization, the personality of the assistant itself and reliability. Mainly regarding privacy.

It was necessary, for example, to ensure that the equipment only listens when activated, but to ensure that it also operates in a more natural and objective way. Meanwhile, more than ever, Amazon is working hand-in-hand with suppliers and development partners, connecting to APIs and skills to bridge gaps and expand the interaction and automation capabilities available to equipment.

US users will be the first to get a preview version of the new Alexa, which doesn’t have a specific release date yet. Availability in other regions, especially in languages ​​other than English, has no specific date.

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