Voice Assistants: Watching Over Your Kids, Shopping for Flowers, and Enabling Multilingual Conversations
This week’s most important news from the world of Conversational AI
Women are nicer to smart assistants
According to a recent poll held by Pew Research Center, 62% of women say “please” to smart assistants (at least sometimes), 17% more than men, only 45% of whom ask nicely. Some experts believe that the devices may reinforce gender stereotypes and attribute the discrepancy in the research to men being ruder than women. While others believe that men are more comfortable with tech “seeking to master it as a tool.”
Google Assistant’s interpreter mode is out to Android phones and iPhones
The new technology enables people speaking different languages to carry on a conversation while. The language interpreter tool os coming to Android phones and iPhones: just activate the Google Assistant, and say something like, “Be my French translator,” or “Help me speak Spanish.”
Baidu’s new touch-screen smart speaker focuses on child safety
Baidu has unveiled its latest touch-screen smart speaker with facial recognition and child controls. Priced at 599 yuan ($85.77), the new “Xiaodu Smart Display X8” comes with an 8-inch display, voice and facial recognition, hand gesture controls and the ability to track eye movement. Equipped with a library of videos, music, games and online education programs, and the device has child controls that are meant to prevent children from “overusing” the product and from accessing inappropriate content.
Alexa in the UK allows to voice-order flower delivery
British Florist Interflora launched voice commerce Alexa skill, becoming the UK’s first voice commerce retailer for flowers through Amazon’s voice assistant. The skill allows people to buy and send flowers through Alexa, using Amazon Pay to conduct transactions by voice.
