Amazon …On The Future Of Voice Assistants

Alexa is here to stay. We discover where you’ll find more voice options in the future, and the big way your Echo device will get smarter about conversations

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Eric King, general manager of Amazon Alexa Europe, has been helping to grow Amazon’s voice services ever since it first opened the system up to developers, and has led the charge for growing the range of Alexa Skills and hardware partners for Amazon Voice Services that have defined Alexa’s rise to the top of the voice-assistant charts.

Are there areas of the tech world that you think voice control would be suited for, but it hasn’t really permeated yet?

Where we see customers adopting voice most aggressively and at the fastest rate is in areas where, frankly, it makes their lives easier – where life is easier when you don’t have to fumble for a phone in order to do something. We see our next logical advancement to that happening in the car. That is an area where we’re investing heavily today, together with companies like BMW, Toyota, Ford and SEAT. There’s a whole set of companies that are interested in these car scenarios where customers are typically doing one of four things that voice [control] would make easier.

They’re navigating, they’re searching for entertainment, they’re communicating with people outside of the car, and they’re controlling things within the car. So vocal control. It might be windshield wipers. It might be windows. It might be lights. Another set of scenarios is what I would call ‘on the go’ scenarios. So Fitbit was one. It was natural. You’ve got [the Versa 2] on your wrist. You’re running. You want to do a quick check and not be fumbling through which buttons to press and when – but simply to ask, ‘How many calories have I burned?’ It’s one of those simple but delightful experiences where we see this taking off.