Before I start, I’ll be honest: there’s no personal assistant that I really like. I have already talked about how personal assistants give painful results, focusing more on flashy functions than on those that are really useful for our daily lives. It took ChatGPT to happen to make everyone realize what useful Artificial Intelligence really is.
Alexa will notice ChatGPT
The public launch of ChatGPT has set off all the alarms for Google and Amazon, who suddenly have a rival destroying their “smart” systems. We have already seen that Google has launched in response Bard, an alternative to ChatGPT, and that it is developing an AI-based search engine from scratch.
But what about Amazon? As revealed Business Internthe creators of Alexa have also realized that they have a lot to improve on, and the good news is that they are ready to take action.
Alexa will improve with functions inspired by ChatGPT
According to an internal document, a project is already underway with the aim of making Alexa more similar to ChatGPT, with generative AI functions and a more typical human assistant experience. Alexa will be “smarter” and the idea is to make it look like it’s “thinking” instead of just displaying results from a database as usual.
Among the new features Alexa will gain with this change are a new video search, personal recommendations, and the ability to tell stories or browse today’s news, summarizing the day’s posts.
This does not mean that Alexa will use GPT-4, the language model used by ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Amazon has developed its own model, called the Alexa Teacher Model, which it has been using for a few years now but will be bigger, more widespread and more capable.
Amazon wants Alexa to be more proactive and conversational using this technology. AI will be able to understand complex questions and take context into account to answer them. The results displayed will be more accurate and personalized, based on video and audio. In the case of the Echo Show with screen, it will be able to display visual maps that represent the answer.
The Amazon Echo Show will be able to take better advantage of the screen
The free Android
For example, Amazon offers that you can ask Alexa for shows that look like the one you’ve seen, but don’t have an element you don’t like as part of the story, or which are similar in a specific aspect such as the presence of a female lead; Alexa will be able to do a synopsis of the recommended series, and the Echo Show will show the trailer.
What’s unclear is when exactly this new version of Alexa will roll out, but Amazon certainly wants it to be soon. After all, the document mentions possible opportunities to earn revenue with Alexa, including partnerships with Disney, Lego and other companies to promote their content and products. And that’s exactly what the company needs, after the Alexa division ended the year with a $10 billion loss.
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