Alexa voice assistant. Amazon Alexa Ecosystem - An overview of everything that can work with Alexa Echo. What is Amazon Echo
I recently came across two popular voice assistants. In this review I will talk about what they can do and what they can’t do yet.
Purchase and installation
Google Home now costs $129, Amazon Echo with Alexa is $179. Both, of course, are not sold in Russia. Well, we go to the USA and buy there.
Google Home is offered in 7 different colors of a rag cover that covers the bottom of the device (where the speaker is located). Alexa comes in black and white and is significantly larger and heavier in size than its competitor. Both are made of nice matte plastic. In my personal opinion, Google Home looks like some kind of stump, while the lower part of Alexa looks like a colander. But there is no arguing about tastes.
But it should be noted that Google Home has an excellent box, you want to open and close it again and again. The product designers did a great job.
Alexa has 2 buttons as external interfaces, and Google has a small invisible touchscreen, which I rarely manage to hit. However, these buttons are not needed, because all functions can be controlled by voice.
To connect, you need to download the application (the Alexa application had to be installed as an apk, it is not in the Russian store), and configure access to home Wi-Fi. This is done quite simply, you just need to remember to also turn on bluetooth on your phone. After connecting to home Wi-Fi devices quickly link to the application - and you can see how their engines interpret the received phrases.
A little about safety. As is known, “the S in IoT stands for Security”. Assistants are linked to yours personal account, but do not recognize the owner’s voice. Anyone can use them to read your mail and whatever else you entrusted to them.
Speech recognition
Call pattern recognition (“OK, Google” and “Alexa”) occurs locally, while phrase recognition and response generation occurs in the cloud. If we consider them as hubs for managing a smart home, then here lies the fundamental difference between these platforms and HomeKit, which can work offline. It has never happened to me that assistants did not recognize their name. But it has happened more than once that something else was adopted as a name.
Google understands Central Russian English for my wife and I very well. Almost all simple phrases are recognized correctly on the first try, which cannot be said about Alex. Below I tried to say pretty to her compound word:
- Alexa, what’s under rubber new riddle?
- Alexa, what is them to bring new rail?
- Alexa, what is an tripper no real?
Ok, let's simplify the question
- Alexa, what is interpret priner?
- Alexa, what is an Trump renewal?
- Alexa, what is an to pandora?
Let's go from the other side
- Alexa, what is a synonym for businessman?
- Business’s synonyms include business executive and business person.
Okay, honey. For those interested, the original word was entrepreneurial.
Let's have a casual conversation
Both assistants have a built-in extensive set of preset phrases and responses. No one to talk to about love, about life? Robots at your service. For example, both can be asked to “tell me a joke”. They have a wide range of jokes, but none of the jokes seemed funny to me. I think insidious neural networks are just pretending to be dumber than they are.
- Alexa, who killed Kenny?
- Oh my god, they killed Kenny!
- OK, Google, are you robot?
- I prefer to think of myself as your friend
- Alexa, what is the purpose of life?
- The answer is 42, but the question is far more complicated
- OK, Google, what is your gender?
- I am all inclusive
- Alexa, does Santa exist?
- I don’t know him personally, but I heard a lot of good things about Santa
- OK, Google, tell me a story
- One there lived a protagonist and some supporting characters. Together they went on a journey. And twist ending, it was all a dream!
- Alexa, am I funny
- I don’t have a sense of humor so it’s hard for me to tell
And here she definitely didn’t lie.
Search
Alexa sends questions to bing, and where Google Home sends them is easy to guess. Both assistants use internet search and Wikipedia quite well to answer questions. In my opinion, Google searches better - it is more flexible with search phrases and more often understands that the query is a search query.
- Alexa, when was Moscow founded?
- Moscow state of establishment was 1147
- OK, Google, what is the greatest number
- According to English Language and Usage, 7 is the smallest and 9 is the greatest number
- Alexa, where is Kilkenny?
- Kilkenny is a city in Kilkenny, Ireland (...)
- OK, Google, which fish is the fastest?
- Sailfish. According to china.org.cn the sailfish is the fastest fish in the world able to speed at a swim speed of 68 miles per hour
So, Boris Borisych, finally dispel your doubts, the AI told us everything.
Out-of-the-box features
Both can tell you what’s on your Google calendar (but they only speak the Latin spelling). They haven't read the mail yet. And glory to the robots, see above about safety.
Google can translate into many languages, Alexa cannot.
- OK, Google, what is ‘Mother washed a frame’ in Russian?
- Mother washed the frame
Both can stream music from popular applications(pay money), as well as radio and news (free). As for music, you need to understand that since the data on the hardware goes through the Cloud, it is difficult to stream it from your phone; there is no such option. Amazon and Google allow you to download for free to your account on their music services a certain number of tracks and play them from there.
Alexa lets you shop on Amazon. You can set a pin code for purchases so that neighbors don’t play games.
- Alexa, shopping
- Would you like to shop?
- Yes
- What would you like to order?
- Books
- Voice ordering is exclusively available for prime members. Would you like me to add Books to Nikolai’s cart instead?
- Yes
Here a set of books appears in the application, you can continue shopping there.
In addition, both have quite a lot of sensible and not very useful features, such as a quiz game, an alarm clock, a calculator, a converter of measures and currencies, Dictionary and so on.
Features with a tambourine
On December 8, the launch of an open API for Google Home was announced. It is said that a mechanism called Google Actions will work in early 2017 and will allow third parties to create dialog scripts through which the user can access the content or services of the provider. Wisely wrote, in general, look how it works in the Alexa Skill Kit, which has existed since mid-2015.
The Alexa app has a store of skills developed by various services, such as Expedia or NASA. A skill is access to services/information of a service through voice commands. You can connect it for free in the store or simply by voice by calling keyword or phrase.
- Alexa, ask NASA Mars to get me a Curiosity rover update
- Alexa, ask RecipeFinder what I can cook with tuna and cheese
- Here are some more recipes (..) I have included links to the recipes in your cart
Links appear in the application. Not clickable arrrrgh!
The cool thing about skills is that they represent a dialogue that can have quite a lot of development options (unlike IFTTT scripts, which will be discussed later). So far, the number of ratings for skills in the Alexa store is measured in the hundreds, so these are only the first steps in creating voice interfaces. Expedia and Kayak launched their skills, but they do not allow you to book tickets and hotels by voice, you can only view prices. However, you can book a car on Expedia, order an Uber, and there's even one banking skill that lets you pay bills.
In addition, Alexa and Google have their own IFTTT channel through which you can configure even more functions. IFTTT allows you to create triggers between services like “if service 1 said A, then send command B to service 2.” Almost all Smart Home hardware, several large retail chains (they only allow you to update your online shopping cart) and a million information portals. The problem with IFTTT is that all the recipes for Alexa and Google allow you to do something by voice command (notes in a spreadsheet, post on Facebook, turn on the thermostat), but do not allow you to send the connection back (read notes, read Facebook, ask the temperature) . Apparently the developers didn't provide an appropriate API, but I don't understand why. If they can read the calendar, they could also read messages from IFTTT, but no.
Further development
To summarize, I would say that Alexa now has more capabilities than Google due to Skills, but all this can appear in it quite quickly. By the way, a year and a half ago, Amazon launched a $100 million venture fund, the Alexa Fund, to invest in projects using the Alexa voice interface. The fund already has 10 investments, the largest of which is in Ecobee, a thermostat that has either already overtaken or is about to overtake Nest in sales.
Amazon also has the Alexa Voice Service SDK, which allows you to run Alexa on third-party hardware. Google has not yet released a similar SDK; they plan to release it this year.
Overall, the Amazon vs Google competition in the Smart Home field promises to be interesting. While Google failed its attempt to crush platforms and protocols with the unsuccessful Brillo-Weave project, Amazon took the lead with the development of voice interfaces. Google is now forced to catch up, with a delay of about a year and a half. But Google has a higher-quality voice library, and in general it is smarter, better programmed, so the situation is close to parity. If you are reading this article for purely practical purposes and you are not an American, when choosing between two devices, I would suggest buying Google, as it understands better and searches better. Complex conversational interfaces from the Skills Store are of little use if they can't understand you properly.
Tags:
- iot
- amazon
- voice control
- speech recognition
In yet another attempt to implement ideas from science fiction films, tech giants, one after another, began working on virtual assistants. At the Google I/O 2016 conference the company presented Google Assistant, as well as an analogue of Amazon Echo - the home voice assistant Google Home.
The latest major company to enter the virtual assistant race. Let's figure out what competitors it has (including among startups).
First, let's remember what Google Now is.
Google Voice Search/Google Now
Peculiarities: Fast. Extremely accurate when creating routes. It frightens you with its knowledge of your flights, bookings and other details. with some third party applications: Manage notes, messages, and music playback.
Flaws: Sometimes you get bored with excessive initiative (for example, it shows the results of games of teams that are not interesting to you, or routes to home from famous places). Useless when controlling a smart home. Work on integration with third-party applications seems to have stalled.
Humanity Level: Null. Not conducive to communication. It doesn't even have a name other than Google.
Summary: Google's vast reserves of personal data and access to a search engine should, in theory, make Google an industry leader, but the company has yet to even figure out how to leverage its advantages and create an assistant that can understand the user. Today Google Now and voice search They compete on equal terms with Siri, but have not yet reached a new level of development.
And now - about competitors.
Apple Siri
What: A voice assistant that can talk to the user and give proactive recommendations. Activated by long pressing the Home button on the iPad. Assistant support has recently appeared on Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Peculiarities: Easy to use on iOS devices. Understands natural speech. Knowledgeable about news, weather, sports, movies, routes and local businesses. Can tell you what to watch on TV. Able to interact with some elements of a “smart home”.
Flaws: Cannot interact with most other applications and services. Works slower than some competitors.
Humanity Level: He is not able to carry on a full conversation, but at certain moments he demonstrates his own wisdom. The female voice sounds relatively human.
Flaws: It feels great on Windows - a platform that is least interesting to developers, and, possibly, to users. Using the assistant on Android and iOS is more difficult and has fewer functions.
Humanity Level: Loves jokes, especially banal ones. Has a long list of witty answers to common questions ready. Can read passages from Shakespeare.
Summary: After years of being in the shadows of Siri and Google, Cortana has become a much more interesting chatbot. Microsoft wants to make its voice assistant the underlying intelligence for all other bots, able to manage your travels, meetings, to-do lists and other things, as well as increase integration with other Microsoft products, such as Office. The company's goal is to create a new shell for computing technology in the post-PC era, but it's too early to judge whether it will succeed or not.
Facebook M
What: Partly managed, partly by people, and still in development. M will be a text-based assistant in the Facebook Messenger environment.
Peculiarities: Will try to do everything you ask.
Flaws: It is not yet a finished product, and will not be for a long time. Available only to a small number of users in San Francisco.
Humanity Level: Extremely high, since people will be involved in shaping the answers to questions. According to Wired, the company hopes that over time M will learn from these operators and be able to work more independently.
Summary: On this moment M is just a little more than just an idea. But given Facebook's interest in chatbots in general, it wouldn't be surprising if M ends up being super-intelligent.
X.ai
What: One of the few virtual assistants that has only one function. It works only through e-mail, where it can make appointments at your request.
Peculiarities: Knows your schedule and preferences, negotiates with other participants for you.
Peculiarities: Viv promises that their product will be able to understand complex questions such as: “Will the temperature near the Golden Gate Bridge be above 20 degrees the day after tomorrow after 5 pm?” Work is underway to ensure compatibility with third-party applications.
Flaws: So far, other than prepared presentations, there is no evidence that everything works exactly as stated.
Humanity Level: Values visual aids and specific answers more highly than detailed description. The presence of wit is questionable.
Flaws: Integration options with third-party applications are limited, and it is impossible to open the service directly on iOS or Android. Requests that the assistant cannot recognize are redirected to Ask.com.
Humanity Level: He is not conducive to long conversations, but knows how to answer additional questions.
Summary: It seems that mobile applications Hound actually exists only to show off the capabilities of the Houndify service (adding voice assistant functionality to any application - editor's note), which SoundHound plans to sell to other companies. If everything works out, we won’t even know that we are using it.
Ozlo
What: AI, whose main function at the moment is to search for cafes, bars and restaurants. Available to a limited number of users.
Peculiarities: Finds and combines data from multiple sources, including Yelp and Foursquare, and then presents everything in the form of convenient cards. Tries to communicate by asking and answering follow-up questions, such as “what places are open now?” or “what’s on their menu?”
Flaws: Limited features unless Ozlo creators add new features. AI relies heavily on users to train.
Humanity Level: Avoids unnecessary pleasantries, only briefly greets by name.
Summary: Ozlo would be no different from many other chatbots if it did not have the prospect of creating something more. The ability to combine data from multiple sources into a single result is unique, but it remains to be seen whether developers will be able to realize the full potential they claim. In the meantime, Ozlo's business plan is limited to just the app, and there may be problems collecting the data necessary for training.
SpeakToIt Assistant.ai
What: One of many copies of Siri. In the app store, searching for Siri brings up many similar programs, such as Voice Commands, Voice Secretary and Assistant.
Peculiarities: Not much different from Siri, but can learn custom commands to activate a list of functions.
Flaws: Not as useful as the built-in assistant on your smartphone, and not as convenient.
Humanity Level: It sounds rather unnatural, but portrays himself as a human assistant whose gender and appearance can be changed.
Summary: Some of these Siri clones look like a relic of the past, when not all iPhone models could work with Apple's proprietary assistant and needed a replacement. In any case, it seems that their creators are aware that this approach will not achieve success. For example, SpeakToIt moved to create a set of tools that other developers could use to make their own chatbots.
Voice activated smart speaker Amazon Echo with Alexa is not only futuristic, but also practical and affordable. With a rapidly growing list of features, integrations, and use cases, it's hard to imagine the full potential of Echo devices.
Pros:
- “Always Listening” - Just say “Alexa” in the room with the device and give commands, no buttons required
- Superior speech recognition
- Voice control
- Good design
Minuses:
- Russian language is not supported Alexa only works in English, German and Japanese.
- No battery, works only from a wall outlet
- Built-in sound is inferior compared to other speakers in this price range
What is Amazon Echo
Imagine a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi speaker with a voice assistant inside, such as Google Assistant. This is the Amazon Echo with the Alexa voice assistant - the first artificial intelligence to receive its own separate device. She will constantly wait for your commands (“always listening”), answer questions, play music and control devices. Alexa is capable of interacting with third-party apps and even making purchases.
Amazon Echo was released in 2015 and has sold more than 11 million devices in the past two years. Amazon releases updates for Echo every week, and the number of Skills—third-party skill apps—is growing. Alexa now looks very good compared to Siri and Google Assistant, and a separate device with 7 microphones gives it a speech recognition quality that Apple and Google can only envy at the moment.
Design
The device may look imposing when you take it out of the box, but indoors the Echo looks rather inconspicuous. A black or white cylinder will organically fit into any interior.
Like many other Bluetooth speakers, Echo has 360-degree sound. The speaker grille in the lower half of the device has a laconic and neat design.
On the top surface of the device there is a barely noticeable circle of cutouts for 7 multi-directional microphones, which allow you to receive commands from a user located in any part of the room. There's also a glowing bezel on top that lets you know with a nice blue light when you're talking to the Echo. It's a strangely warm feeling to see Alexa attentively awaiting your request. The glowing bezel will also indicate when the request has been accepted and is being processed.
You'll almost always be using voice commands, but there is manual volume control (by rotating the top of the cylinder) and a microphone mute button.
It's unlikely you'll be moving the Echo from place to place because, unlike most Bluetooth speakers, the device doesn't have a battery and must always be plugged into an outlet. There is also no AUX output (which is present on), so an external audio system can only be connected via Bluetooth.
Enabling and setting
Connecting Echo is easy even for those who are just starting to use it smart devices. Plug the device into a power outlet, select the network that appears on your computer in the list of Wi-Fi connections with a name in the AMAZON-XXX format, connect to it and enter personal account Alexa login and password for your home Wi-Fi networks. Echo's connection to the Internet is very stable, without any complaints. If any difficulties arise, you can use the connection on our website.
You can transfer many everyday tasks to the device. Set and turn off an alarm clock, a timer while preparing dinner, find out the exchange rate, the meaning of an unfamiliar word, request a summary of an article from Wikipedia. Alexa can be connected to your Google Calendar and manage your schedule.
If you say “Alexa, What’s in the news?” The Flash Briefing, a personalized summary of news from the sources you select, will begin playing. In addition to BBC, CNN and Guardian, you can also install .
You can control a large number of smart home devices with your voice. For example, turn on the lights in the kitchen “Turn on the lights in the kitchen”. It all works great. All standard Alexa commands can be found here.
There are also Alexa Skills apps from third-party developers. Most of them are boring, like interesting facts or quotes from famous people. But there are also very useful ones, such as Fitbit, translation skill or memory training.
Use in Russia
As we wrote above, at the moment smart speakers from Amazon do not support the Russian language, and it is unknown when they will add Russian. We use Echo on English language– you can choose an American or British dialect, as well as German or Japanese.
In Russia, Echo works well, almost all functions are available from Amazon, with the exception of voice purchases on Amazon for obvious reasons and the music streaming service Amazon Music (which only works in 28 Western countries, but there is an excellent alternative - Spotify, and it works great) . The rest of the features work fine: you can set a Russian address, find out the weather forecast, get answers to help questions from Alexa, install applications and manage smart home devices.
Sound quality and speech recognition
Each of Echo's 7 microphones provides long-range speech recognition. Amazon boasts that their device will hear you even when the music is playing loud enough from the speakers.
Speech recognition has been steadily improving since the Echo's release. Now it works simply incredible, Alexa will understand you, even if you formulate a phrase a little strangely or mumble a couple of words in the request. Even strong The device understands Russian accent perfectly. Basically you won't need to remember and use special teams, you simply make a request in the normal form you would address to a person, in most cases Alexa will understand you.
Note that Echo sends all your requests to Amazon servers for recognition and analysis. To improve the quality of recognition of your particular voice in your room, you can run a short training mode for Alexa in the settings.
Smart House
Amazon Echo is already compatible with most popular device manufacturers, such as Philips Hue, WeMo,. If you already have a smart home system with , then most likely Echo also supports your Hub. General rule: Look for the words “Works with Alexa” on gadget boxes. In general, Amazon has a more open and friendly approach towards device manufacturers, unlike, for example, Apple with their HomeKit standard and smart speaker.
Using just your own voice, you can play music, search the Internet, create to-do and shopping lists, shop online, get instant weather reports, and control popular smart home products. But for now, unfortunately, only in English.
Amazon Alexa - what is it?
Amazon Alexa, named after the ancient Greek Library of Alexandria, is a voice control system (virtual assistant) from Amazon that was developed in Lab 126 to compete with other well-known voice assistants such as Google, Google and others.
What devices does Alexa Amazon work on?
Alexa Amazon can be downloaded not only to Amazon Echo, but also to other gadgets and even some smart watch. Installation of the virtual assistant is possible on Amazon Echo Dot, LG SmartThingQ, Tap and others.
Amazon Echo
This device is a smart speaker with Alexa Amazon connection, which is activated using your own voice. The voice assistant is located inside the speaker. Amazon Echo is the first artificial intelligence in history to which the developers gave a distinct “body.”
The difference between such a speaker is that Echo constantly “hears” you. Here, like with Siri, you don’t need to turn on a button or anything else to set a command to execute. With Amazon Echo, everything is much simpler: just say a command out loud, and it will execute it.
Amazon Alexa features?
She can plan your affairs for the short and long term, and monitor home furnishings (lamps, for example). At any time, at your request, Alexa can turn on music. if you are a fan of any sports team, then the virtual assistant can always answer with what score this or that sports game ended.
If necessary, you can develop your own skill for Alexa or use one of the ready-made skills from the catalog (more than 15,000 skills from all areas of life).
How to download and install the Alexa app?
You can download Alexa Amazon in the usual way Google Play And App Store. However, not in the Russian versions, but in the American ones. If you want to download and install this virtual assistant via game stores, then nothing will work out for you.
You can download applications through third-party Internet resources, but there is no guarantee that the file will be virus-free.
Amazon has its own store: Amazon Underground. You can download only the Android virtual assistant there.
How to enable and how to disable?
Alexa can hear you at all times, so all you need to do for a command is “Alexa, (command).” The default activation word is “Alexa,” but you can change it to “Echo,” “Amazon,” or others.
At the moment, the second generation of Alexa and Echo has already been released, which are distinguished from the first generation voice assistants by their responsiveness. There is no activation button for manual activation. Just say the activation phrase ("Alexa", "Echo", "Amazon" or "computer") followed by what you want and it will be done (if you've set everything up correctly and are using the right command).
Once you get used to the assistant's quirks, using Alexa will feel much more natural and intuitive than talking to a phone voice assistant like Siri or Google Assistant. As a result, you'll likely use your phone less often when you're at home.
Setting up the application.
Let's go to Alexa. Settings → Echo Dot.
We connect a sound confirmation so that the speaker always hears you and is waiting to receive various commands.
Find the General section and click Edit. Here you are asked to enter your residence address. Enter it and then save.
Then we convert the temperature to our usual degrees Celsius, and the length to meters.
The setup is complete.
Release of Amazon Alexa in Russian
Let us remind you that Alexa works in three languages: English, German and Japanese.