Alexa is getting smarter.
Amazon’s voice assistant in the U.S. can now predict “latent goals,” or potential requests that a user doesn’t explicitly ask.
In the example above, when a user asks for the weather at Seaside Beach, Alexa responds with the weather, then asks if the user wants to set a live camera feed of Seaside Beach on the screen.
Or, as described in a blog post, a user could say: “how long does it take to steep tea?” Alexa would answer with “five minutes is a good place to start,” then follow with “Would you like me to set a timer for five minutes?”
Amazon uses a “deep-learning-based trigger model” that analyzes the conversation and past interaction history, among other data, to help Alexa figure out appropriate times to ask these types of follow-up questions.
Early data shows that latent-goal discovery is increasing customer engagement with certain Alexa skills, Amazon said.
This is the latest expansion of Alexa’s conversational capabilities. In September Amazon unveiled new Alexa features including the ability to learn different modes for reading or vacation unique to each user, and a new “natural turn-taking” feature that lets users invite Alexa to join a conversation taking place in the kitchen, for example, chiming in as two people order a pizza and pick a movie for the evening. Amazon also rolled out a new privacy-related feature that lets users automatically and immediately delete their voice recordings.
In July Amazon showed off Alexa Conversations, a new dialogue manager that aims to make it easier for developers to design voice apps without worrying about specific command phrases or the order.
