Alexa, can you be as smart as a chatbot?
Amazon is joining the race to compete with ChatGPT by bringing new — and still experimental — artificial intelligence capabilities to its talking Echo smart speakers.
On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled a new version of its Alexa voice assistant powered by what it called “smarter and more-conversational” generative AI technology.
Amazon said it would offer this new Alexa to all existing Echo speaker owners as part of a preview.
Here’s how it worked during a demo at Amazon’s launch event: Say, “Alexa, let’s chat,” and an Echo smart speaker enters a special conversational mode. In this mode, Alexa acts like a speaking version of a chatbot, bantering back and forth about a wide range of topics. Amazon showed people asking it for advice about travel and to write stories and emails, with people able to interrupt and redirect the AI mid-sentence.
“You can have a near-human-like conversations with Alexa,” said Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices & services.
Amazon also said a separate version of the new Alexa designed to answer questions for children in a “safe” manner would debut before this year’s holiday season.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.)
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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