The Future will be Spoken

Millions of people have adopted a new member of the family. These new family members don’t say much, eat less and are ears.

Alexa, Siri and Google’s Home pod quickly became adopted and valuable additions to the dynamic in millions of homes across North America. These devices are the newest beachheads of technology in the home and represent the future of AI integration. Terry O’Reilly, CBC’s radio host of Under the Influence believes that voice represents the future of marketing. https://podcast-a.akamaihd.net/mp3/podcasts/undertheinfluence_20150530_82920.mp3 Voice interfaces paired with artificial intelligence will be programmed to shop, schedule, work and socialize for (with) us. The IOT (Internet of Things) will connect us to objects, companies and devices like never before in profound ways.

St. Louis University has a new program to integrate Alexa into the dorm life of students at the century old school. https://www.cnet.com/features/alexa-time-for-class-how-one-university-put-an-echo-dot-in-every-dorm-room/ Alexa can provide campus specific information, provide schedules, and play the campus iHeartRadio account. Each device is provided to dorm residents, but not linked to any individual student or room, to provide for anonymity and privacy. No student specific information or audio is recorded.

Alexa’s Business platform provides a vehicle for companies to build customized applications to assist in running the enterprise. https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/features/

Alexa provides a set of built-in capabilities, referred to as skills and the Alexa Skills Kit lets you teach Alexa new skills. According to Amazon, customers can access these new abilities by asking Alexa questions or making requests. You can build skills that provide users with many different types of abilities. For example, a skill might do any one of the following:

• Look up answers to specific questions (“Alexa, ask tide pooler for the high tide today in Seattle.”)

• Challenge the user with puzzles or games (“Alexa, play Harry Potter quiz.”)

• Control lights and other devices in the home (“Alexa, turn on the living room lights.”)

• Provide audio or text content for a customer’s flash briefing (“Alexa, give me my flash briefing”)

Voice is the future interface of choice for consumers. It’s a target rich environment of opportunities for developers and entrepreneurs keen to take advantage of this new platform.