Alexa and her role in the upcoming voice technology revolution.
Introduction
Do we need screens to interact with our computers and smartphones?
The answer is No, interacting with the computer by just pushing some buttons on a screen is just an old-school way of interacting with the computer system.
Now we have technologies like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, etc these technologies are available in devices like your phone, smart tv, smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Google home mini, etc. The voice devices are becoming more and more popular day by day.
My purpose in writing this article is to discuss the present undergoing changes in the domain of technologies and devices using the Voice User Interface(VUI) with a special focus on Alexa.
The world is shifting towards the Voice User Interface(VUI).
Before we start this section let me ask you a few questions
- Have you ever used google assistant/Siri/Alexa on your phone?
- Have you ever listened to a podcast?
- Have you ever listened to an audiobook?
- Have you ever played a video on youtube and just listened to the audio?
If answers to the above questions are “Yes” then you will not face any problem in using Alexa or Google assistant for ordering food, booking flights, booking movie tickets, booking an Uber, etc.
Now let’s see some stats on these voice assistance enabled devices-
- According to Google, 20% of all searches are the voice.
- 65% of Amazon Echo or Google Homeowners don’t want to go back to the days of keyboard input.
- 5% of individuals aged 16–24 use voice search on their mobile devices.
- Individuals aged 26–35 are the most likely to be smart speaker owners.
- 22% of smart speaker owners have bought something using voice search assistance.
- 46% of smart speaker owners use voice search to find a business situated in their vicinity every day.
- 20% of mobile queries are voice searches.
for more stats, you can refer to 99firms.
These are the stats majorly covering the US but India is also on its way to adapt this change in the technology.
When I think of how Bharat(rural India) will adapt to the voice technology a scene from 3 idiots(Bollywood movie) comes to my mind.
In this scene when Raju and Chatur ask a local guy about the address written on a piece of paper.
Local guy- “Bhai sahab padhna likhna aata toh bhuja thodi na bechta”
Chatur- “isko padhna ni aati”
Raju- “padhna ni aati pr bolna toh aati hai na”
Here the local guy can’t read and write in English but can speak his local language so if technology allows him to interact in his local language he and millions of other Indians will able to use the technology wisely.
Tech giants like Google and Amazon are also concerned about the applicability of voice technology with the local languages that is why they are pushing the developers worldwide to create things like Alexa skill upon the local languages.
Alexa skills and their applications.
Alexa itself is capable of having conversations and giving basic details like a weather forecast, telling jokes but if you dig deep into what Alexa is capable of you will come across Alexa Skills. In simple words, you can understand these skills by relating them to the android apps on the google play store. The way developers build android apps and list them on play store in the same way developers can also build their own Alexa skill and list it on the Alexa skill store.
This is a screenshot of the homepage of the Alexa skill store you can visit there and enable the skills of your choice.
Alexa is not just confined to the echo devices or other third-party devices you can also use Alexa on your android phone by downloading the Alexa mobile app from the Google Play Store.
Here you can navigate through skills search and use different skills and also manage your other Alexa enabled devices through your phone.
Now let’s discuss the capabilities of Alexa skills. Suppose you are booking a movie ticket using Alexa then the assistant will ask you whether she should book an Uber to the theater and also whether she should reserve a table in a nearby restaurant. You can see the proper demonstration of this in this video, in the keynote speech given by Mr. Rohit Prasad(vice president and head scientist of Alexa) at the re:MARS (an event by Amazon).
Alexa can perform such a task by understanding customer behavior such as for the above-stated set of skills let us assume how the customers behave earlier for planing an evening first they book a ticket, then they book an uber and then they search for some nearby restaurant. Since a large number of consumers are using the skills in this particular order and the aim is to make Alexa more natural and conversational, algorithms are designed in a way that Alexa itself offers these skills in sequence to make the user experience smooth and effective.
Alexa in India
According to Mr. Prem Natarajan as said by him in the keynote of voxcon India the major challenge for the company is to make Alexa more locally relevant by locally relevant I mean in India majority of consumers are multilingual so while talking to Alexa if a customer uses the word “gum” then Alexa should be able to recognize that whether he is referring to the Hindi word that means “sad” or the “chewing gums”.
Mr. Prem also emphasized the point that adding Hindi to Alexa was itself a very challenging task because hindi as a language is used by people here in India in multiple ways and the tone and pronunciation changes very drastically as we go from one place to other. The most interesting thing that I found when it comes to consumer behavior here in India was that the families itself are very diverse as in a family of three members the husband is from Chennai, the wife is from Delhi and their child is born and brought up in Ahmedabad this family will be using same Alexa device and all three of them have different accents which itself is a challenge for the device which work on conversational AI. There are a million such use cases in India.
You can watch Alexa ads on youtube to see different use cases the company is targeting while watching those ads I would encourage you to think as a developer rather than a consumer and you will see all of them show completely different dynamics.
There are 5 pillars on which Alexa is functioning and becoming more and more relevant to the people -
- Context Awareness
Alexa is becoming more and more context-aware i.e its understanding the intents more properly example:-
You- “Alexa, How’s the weather today?”
Alexa- “Sunny 27-degree Celcius”(something like that)
You- “What about tomorrow?”
Note here in the above dialogue when you didn’t mention the context in the second question that you are asking about the weather but the Alexa is context-aware i.e she knows this is a discussion about the weather in Delhi so she gives the appropriate answer.
2. Naturalness
The vision is to make Alexa act like one of the family members so it is much more important for her to act and behave like one.
In the same event voxcon India here’s a dialogue between Mr. Dilip RS and Alexa.
Dilip- “Alexa kya haal hai?”
Alexa- “Bas aapne puvh lia dil garden-garden ho gya!”
This is the type of Indian touch company is aiming for, of course, you will never accept an Alexa device which pronounces Swami Vivekanand and Sachin Tendulkar the way President Donald Trump did on his recent visit to India.
3.Self Learning
Self-learning is the basic pillar of any AI-based device, in the case of Alexa, we can discuss some use cases as when you say “Alexa book me a cab” Alexa should be smart enough not to ask any further questions like “ola or uber?” she should book a cab by analyzing your personal preferences she already has.
Another case is when children ask Alexa to “play ABC song” instead of “Alphabet song” and it is corrected once or twice. Now Alexa is smart enough to play the Alphabet song whenever the next time there is a request for ABC song.
4. Knowledgeable
When it comes to a device that has to be operated worldwide the knowledge about local contexts is very important as in India if someone is asking score from Alexa then it is pretty sure that he is asking about cricket scores. The answer to some questions is different for different places in the world. For achieving the dream of an Artificial General Intelligence the systems have to be made as knowledgeable as they can.
5. Competence
Competence means the capabilities to perform tasks. Alexa is becoming more and more competent, this is due to the efforts of the developers worldwide who made almost 90000+ skills and out of these 30000+ skills are available in India.
Alexa is now also able to perform multiple intents like “Alexa play pop music and dim the lights.” in this statement two different commands are given at a time and Alexa is now competent enough to perform both of them together.
Conclusion
To conclude I would say to all the developers that we have a tremendous opportunity in this field as you can easily learn to build Alexa skills, you also have a chance of building something in your own local language and in future, you can also apply for becoming an Alexa influencer which has its own benefits.
“The best way to predict the future is to stay updated today”
With this quote, I would like to say that we all know that the conversational AI is the next big thing in the industry so let’s contribute our part in this Ambient Computing Revolution.
