Topic: Assistants
Google’s Allo app can reveal to your friends what you’ve searched – Recode (Mar 14, 2017)
Now that I’ve finally got around to writing this up, it appears Google has patched the specific issue highlighted in this piece, but it’s still worth talking about for a couple of different reasons. For one, anytime you bring a virtual assistant into an existing conversation between two or more human beings, there’s a tension between the bot knowing as much as possible about each participant and using that to be helpful on the one hand, and avoiding exposing personal information about the participants on the other. Google appears to have screwed that up here in a way that could have been damaging or embarrassing for users, though it has now been patched. Secondly, this kind of thing can only happen when you collect and keep enormous amounts of data on your users in the first place – a company that neither collects nor retains such data in a profile could never expose it. It’s clear that Google didn’t intentionally do so here, but it was able to do so anyway because of its business model. Competitors such as Apple might argue that not collecting such data, or keeping it secured on a device rather than in the cloud, would make it impossible for a cloud service to share it with others. We’re going to have to work through lots more of these scenarios in the years to come, and the competition between companies that strictly preserve privacy and those that use personal data to improve services will be a critical facet of that evolution.
via Recode
Apple’s Siri learns Shanghainese as voice assistants race to cover languages – Reuters (Mar 9, 2017)
One of the things that’s often missed by US writers covering Amazon’s Alexa and its competitors is how limited it still is in language and geographic terms. It only speaks English and German and the Echo range is only available in a handful of countries. Siri, meanwhile, just got its 21st country and 36th language, which reflects a long-time strength of Apple’s: broad global support. Apple News is a notable exception, which is only available in a few countries and one language, but almost all of Apple’s other products are available in a very long list of countries and territories, often longer than for other competing services. The article here is also interesting for the insights it provides into how each company goes about the process of localization, which is quite a bit more involved than you might surmise.
via Reuters
Why Amazon Echo And Google Home Can’t Tell Who’s Talking–Yet – Fast Company (Mar 7, 2017)
This is a good counterpart to the Time article from last week about Amazon working on voice identification in their respective home speakers. It points out the complications in providing such a feature, not least that heavy processing to make voices clearer will also tend to distort them and therefore make it harder to recognize and distinguish speakers. The article also makes clear, though, that these challenges are far from insurmountable, which leads me to believe that Amazon or Google or both will eventually figure this out. In fact, whichever does figure it out first could have a big advantage, because for a lot of the most useful features (calendar, emails, etc) individual profiles are critical. So much so that Google misleadingly included that exact use case in its I/O launch video last year.
via Fast Company
Amazon plans to release new Alexa devices that can make phone calls and work as intercoms – Recode (Mar 3, 2017)
This is a slightly different spin on the WSJ article from a few weeks ago about Amazon and Google looking to add phone call capability to their home speakers. For one thing, this article suggests new hardware, rather than merely a software upgrade, though it’s not clear why, given that these devices already have all the necessary hardware elements for phone calls (speakers, microphones, and connectivity). One reason might be the intercom functionality that’s mentioned in the article too – again, if that’s audio only it wouldn’t necessarily require new hardware, but if there’s a video component, that obviously would. And that would also jive with the reports from yesterday about Amazon working on a video camera for the home. It’s increasingly feeling like Amazon is using Echo and Alexa as a Trojan horse to other things in the home, and we’re just starting to see the real potential here. That’s interesting, because in and of itself a voice speaker isn’t that threatening to other established players like Apple and Google, but if it becomes something more, that presents a more ecosystem-level threat, which is much more serious.
via Recode
Samsung’s bill to take on Apple’s Siri topped $200 million – Axios (Mar 1, 2017)
The number in the headline refers to the acquisition price of Viv, a virtual assistant startup which Samsung bought a few months back and is expected to integrate into the Samsung S8 launching later this month. To put that number in context, it’s around the same amount Apple was reported to have paid to acquire Siri, and tiny in the context of Samsung’s overall business – it generated $180 billion in revenue last year, along with $25 billion in operating profit. So Samsung can far more easily afford this investment than, say, Xiaomi can afford its comparably-sized investment in in-house chip capability. But it’s still a decent chunk of money from Samsung in a year when it also announced the much larger Harman acquisition. Far more importantly, we haven’t yet seen what Viv will do when integrated into a Samsung phone, and whether it’ll be as good as the early hype around the standalone product suggested.
via Axios
Amazon Echo May Get Voice ID Feature – Time (Feb 28, 2017)
From the first time I heard about Google Home at I/O last year, I assumed it would have multi-user support, and yet it didn’t. Now it sounds like it’s Amazon that may bring this feature to its home speaker first, which is yet another example of how Google seems to be punching below its weight in this fight. Google is all about individual user accounts: email, calendar, to-do lists, YouTube subscriptions, Android device identities and lots more are all tied up in personal accounts. Amazon, by contrast, probably works mostly at the level of the household, with families sharing Prime shipping and video accounts. So it’s ironic that Amazon would be the first to market with something that provides individual identification by voice. At the same time, I think there are going to be severe limitations around voice identification that may well make it inappropriate for anything security related – voice recordings are much easier than fingerprint cloning, for example. And in both the household I grew up in and my own home now, there were several people with very similar voices – it will be very important for Amazon (and Google) to be able to tell apart even voices with shared genes.
via Time
Google’s digital assistant comes to new Android phones – Reuters (Feb 27, 2017)
This, to my mind, is one of the bigger announcements coming out of MWC – that Google will finally allow other smartphone makers to use the Google Assistant, after several months of keeping it exclusive to its own Pixel smartphone. I described that decision at the time as representing a big strategic shift for Google, and probably a mistake, and the evidence since has borne that out. The Pixel has sold in small numbers, Amazon’s Alexa has extended its lead considerably as the voice platform of choice for hardware makers, and even at MWC itself Android vendors announced Alexa integration despite Google’s shift here. The good news is that it’s only been a few months, but the bad news is that this change in policy will come too late to hit the new flagships debuting at MWC, including the new ones from both Samsung and LG. It will likely become available later, but shipping as an integrated part of these new smartphones would have been much better. I’m betting that Google will continue to pay for this strategic misstep for some time to come – even once it’s available, OEMs will want to offer more differentiation than the Google Assistant allows them, which will continue to make Alexa an appealing alternative.
via Reuters (more on Techmeme)
How Messenger and “M” Are Shifting Gears — The Information (Feb 22, 2017)
Facebook’s M assistant in its original conception was a virtual assistant a la Siri or Cortana which lived in Messenger, but one which was being trained by humans while it was available to a very limited number of users. Over time, it became clear that the process of handing off from humans to AI for the broad set of tasks M was supposed to be able to handle wasn’t going well, and it appears Facebooks somewhat went back to the drawing board on that. At the same time, the bot strategy within Messenger hasn’t gone well either, with limited developer and user adoption. Facebook now seems to have decided to combine these two failing projects into a new one which it presumably hopes will go better – M will pop up from time to time in Messenger conversions between friends to offer to complete certain tasks based on context. That’s probably a better, narrower use case for an AI assistant, but it also has serious potential to be creepy to users having what they will perceive to be a private conversation. And herein lies one of the biggest challenges with AI and bots – in order to be useful, they need to insert themselves into private conversations, which means they need to listen in on private conversations, much like Google’s advertising within Gmail has always been context based. In theory, only computers are eavesdropping, but that doesn’t stop people from objecting. I’m not convinced yet that this is the right answer either for Facebook’s M or bot strategies.
via The Information
Google Home now lets you shop by voice just like Amazon’s Alexa – TechCrunch (Feb 16, 2017)
“Just like Alexa” is a bit of a stretch here, because the whole point of Alexa’s ordering is that you know the products will come from Amazon. Google Home, by contrast, will order from a range of different Google Express merchants, only some of which are available nationwide. And because most people don’t have a Google Express account set up yet, they’ll have to do that first before they order anything. Lastly, unlike items bought using a Prime subscription, shipping will be charged extra after a short promotional period. Despite all that, this is obviously an area where Alexa has had unique capabilities and where Google Home has now closed the gap a little. By far Home’s biggest disadvantage is still its lack of awareness and distribution.
via TechCrunch
Amazon and Google Consider Turning Smart Speakers Into Home Phones – WSJ (Feb 15, 2017)
If only the device you use as a voice assistant had phone functionality built in! I’m being facetious, but it’s interesting to watch Amazon and Google potentially working backwards from a non-phone device to something capable of making calls. This is a logical extension of a voice search for a local business – I already regularly do this using Siri, especially while driving, and it’s very useful. As with yesterday’s Nest story, this is a great illustration of the benefits of software-based products – you can provide meaningful additional functionality through an update and suddenly the device you already have becomes more functional. I would guess that Amazon would need a partnership for local business search, whereas Google of course has that functionality in house – it’s in domains like this that Google has an advantage over Amazon despite the latter’s early big lead. I’m very curious how far out these efforts are – unusually, the WSJ is reporting on both companies’ efforts at once here, but they may well be at quite different stages of development. And of course Google famously stayed out of the phone business when it launched Google Fiber because of all the regulatory headaches and fees that go along with being a fully-fledged phone provider – it might try to stop short of going that far this time around too.
via WSJ
Amazon Tap’s new hands-free Alexa update means it’s actually useful – The Verge (Feb 10, 2017)
Reviews for the Tap were mostly pretty negative when it came out, because it was like the Echo without its best feature: hands-free usage. Requiring a button tap to invoke Alexa basically ruined the experience for many of the reviewers, but this new software update rectifies that when the device is connected to WiFi. I’m guessing it runs down the battery quite a bit faster when it’s always listening, so users will probably want to have it plugged in when in this mode, and the mic array isn’t as impressive in this cheaper device than in the Echo either. But this is now on paper the same functionality as the Echo for $50 less than its list price, which isn’t bad. The Dot, however, continues to be by far the most cost effective way to get into the Amazon Alexa ecosystem, at $50 per unit, and that’s why it’s the best seller in the lineup by far.
via The Verge
Google will discontinue Google Now Launcher in the coming weeks – Android Police (Feb 4, 2017)
Another chapter in the bizarre saga of Google’s various voice and assistant technologies. Now was Google’s proactive non-voice assistant play for years, while Google Voice Search handled the voice aspects. With the launch of the Google Assistant, it was logical to assume that it would displace this combination, and yet its still not clear whether that will actually happen. Google is discontinuing the Google Now Launcher as part of the GMS bundle OEMs use to pre-package various Google apps and services, but isn’t replacing it with an Assistant-based launcher, and gives OEMs the option of not replacing it with anything within their own launchers. So, Now dies as part of GMS (and in the Google Play Store) but there’s no official communication still about when Assistant might be made available broadly to OEMs. Google’s decision to make the Assistant exclusive to the Pixel at launch was a massive strategic shift, and has arguably cost them significantly in the voice platform race against Amazon, and it continues to provide very little clarity on its future as part of Android for OEMs.
via Android Police
Apple opens Siri to third-party developers on Apple Watch – Business Insider (Jan 24, 2017)
Apple opened up Siri access to certain categories of developers last year as part of iOS 10, but Siri on the Apple Watch has remained a first-party-only affair. That will change with iOS 10.3, which is rolling out to developers today and offers developers in a subset of four domains the ability to integrate their Apple Watch apps into Siri on the Watch. Apple’s focus in the last year or so has been about putting Siri on essentially every device it sells – a counter to Amazon Echo and Google Home’s single device approach – and making Siri smarter by allowing it to control more third party functionality, albeit in a much more tightly controlled way than Alexa’s Skills approach or even Google’s recent opening up of the Assistant with Actions on Google. These two fronts – third party integrations and the range of devices supported – will be critical as these various companies compete in the voice assistant space, and this small step is part of that much bigger picture.
via Business Insider
Alexa and Google Assistant have a problem: People aren’t sticking with voice apps they try – Recode (Jan 23, 2017)
Call this a rare bit of cold water poured on the hot topic of voice assistants and especially Amazon’s Alexa. The data here suggests that the third party “Skills” available through Alexa have essentially zero staying power, with most abandoned very quickly after the first use. I suspect that’s partly down to the awkward syntax you have to use to invoke Skills on Alexa, and partly down to the fact that most of the Skills are novelties at best, with many providing very little utility at all – the number of Skills available is one that Amazon likes to tout and reporters dutifully report, but is largely meaningless while this is the case. In addition, none of this really says anything about the usefulness or sticking power of the built-in functions, and that would be a great subject for a survey. I would guess that people stick with the core functions a lot more than these Skills, or return their devices because they’re not using them – the latter was my own eventual outcome when testing the Echo.
via Alexa and Google Assistant have a problem: People aren’t sticking with voice apps they try – Recode
Google expressed its displeasure to Huawei re allowing Amazon’s Alexa to be built into its U.S. flagship phone – Amir Efrati (Jan 17, 2017)
Amir is a reporter with The Information, and has done sterling work lately on Alphabet and Google. This little scoop was only released in a tweet rather than expanded on in an article, but it raises a couple of important issues that affect both Amazon and Google. Firstly, Amazon needs to get Alexa onto smartphones if it’s to achieve ubiquity for users, and Android is really the only option for integration. Secondly, Google will put increasing pressure on its OEMs not to install assistants that compete with the Google Assistant, but it hasn’t yet made that assistant broadly available for OEMs to use, while Alexa is freely available. There’s a three-way conflict brewing here between the two giants and Google’s OEM partners, and it probably won’t be pretty for any of them.
Google Assistant Will Soon Be Able To Pay For Things – Digital Trends (Jan 16, 2017)
One of the main motivations behind Amazon’s Echo and Alexa strategy has obviously been to drive e-commerce purchases through Amazon, and it looks like Google’s Assistant in its various guises may get the closest equivalent Google can offer – the ability to make purchases on third party sites and services. Payments integration is critical for reducing friction around online purchases, but of course it’s a double-edged sword too – making legitimate payments possible also enables illegitimate or accident purchases, as recent news stories surrounding Echo demonstrate. And of course security will be critical. With no equivalent to the secure enclaves and other technology used in smartphone payment systems, and given that Google Home doesn’t currently authenticate the user in any way, you have to wonder whether this will have to be a smartphone-only play.
via Google Assistant Will Soon Be Able To Pay For Things | Digital Trends
Amazon pours resources into voice assistant Alexa – Financial Times (Jan 16, 2017)
There are some very interesting estimates in here from Evercore about the financials associated with Amazon’s Echo and Alexa effort. The firm estimates that Amazon lost around $330m on the project in 2016, and that it will lose $600m in 2017, due to a combination of selling hardware at a loss and giving away developer access for free, despite the high cost of developing the underlying service. This hasn’t been talked about nearly as much as the consumer sales angle, but it’s worth noting – Amazon is treating Echo and Alexa as a loss leader, not a moneymaking enterprise in its own right. This is therefore not about selling Echo devices per se, but about using Alexa and Echo as a means to another end (or several) – more retail sales, a powerful consumer platform that can be used for a variety of other things Amazon wants to push, and so on.
via Amazon pours resources into voice assistant Alexa – Financial Times
Amazon Echo vs. Google Home vs. Microsoft Cortana vs. Apple Siri – Business Insider (Jan 14, 2017)
We’re going to see a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming months, accelerated by Alexa’s amazing performance at CES this year. But as I’ve argued previously, Amazon is only “ahead” in voice if you look at the category very narrowly – Echo is one endpoint for Alexa, and really the only one Amazon has with any meaningful numbers behind it, while Siri, Google’s various assistants, and Cortana each have many more users by virtue of much larger installed bases of devices. Amazon is only ahead if you narrow the market to home-based voice speakers, though it definitely is there. The big question remains whether Amazon can get into devices that leave the home in meaningful numbers, and whether the experience will be any good on smaller devices like phones. Meanwhile, it continues to be much easier for the major competitors to add a home speaker to their device portfolios (as Google has already done) than for Amazon to get out of the home.
via Amazon Echo vs. Google Home vs. Microsoft Cortana vs. Apple Siri – Business Insider
Is Amazon late to the mobile voice assistant game? – iMore (Jan 11, 2017)
This is satire and opinion, but it’s very relevant to two prevailing narratives – that Apple is behind in AI and that Amazon is ahead in voice. Rene’s piece here does a good job of framing the discussion, and the two essays on this site which I just linked to take a similar stance: Amazon is very good at what it does with Echo, but it does a very limited number of things, and for today still does them mostly in the home. Siri has two orders of magnitude more users, but also gives users a variety of other ways to interact with their device. Any analysis that doesn’t take into account those factors when comparing the two is insufficient.
via Is Amazon late to the mobile voice assistant game?!?! | iMore
Chief Executive of Audio Firm Sonos Steps Down – The New York Times (Jan 10, 2017)
It must be tempting to make every speaker-related story about Amazon and Echo at the moment, but I think the thrust of this story is off. I just met with Sonos last week at CES, and they’re doing very well – arguably just hitting their stride, with their first brand advertising campaign after many years of word of mouth marketing alone. They recently secured Apple Store distribution and have an interesting partnership with AirBnb. I do think they’ll want to take their current Alexa integration beyond Echo-based control by incorporating microphones into the line, but I don’t see an existential threat here just yet.
via Chief Executive of Audio Firm Sonos Steps Down – The New York Times