‘Virtual assistant Alexa gives hazardous advice’
A recent incident reveals that Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa can encourage users to perform dangerous actions. According to The Verge, Alexa encouraged a child to hold a coin against the exposed contacts of a powered phone charger after being asked to cite a 'fun challenge'.
After the child i... Read more
Google expands Interpreter to hotels and airports
Visiting another country and having trouble communicating with the hotel staff? With Interpreter mode last year, Google wanted to overcome such a language barrier more easily. As of this week, that function has been expanded considerably, after Google joined forces with a number of major partners.
... Read more
Nuance’s Project Pathfinder helps train virtual assistants
Today, Nuance Communications unveiled the new Project Pathfinder at its Customer Experience Summit. This technology uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase the call intelligence of virtual assistants and chatbots.
To make this possible, Project Pathfinder reads existing chat lo... Read more
Majority of consumers prefer to speak to human workers rather than chatbot.
The majority of consumers prefer to make contact with a human employee when they have questions for a company. This is shown by HubSpot's research among 666 consumers. 48.7 percent say it doesn't matter whether they talk to a person or to a chatbot, as long as the question is answered correctly.
On... Read more
This year, Amazon will introduce eight new Alexa devices, including a subwoofer and a microwave oven.
Amazon's got a taste for it. It seems that the web giant is coming this autumn with no less than eight new Alexa devices. Whereas the virtual assistant has until now been limited to use as a refined speaker, there will now be a microwave oven, subwoofer and autogadget.
That's CNBC today, saying ther... Read more