Slashdot Mirror
5,000 People Are Working On Amazon's Digital Assistant Alexa (geekwire.com)
Amazon said this week at an event unveiling the next generation Echo device that it has the equivalent of a small town of people -- more than 5,000 -- working on the company's digital assistant, Alexa. From a report: And Amazon's not even at full capacity when it comes to Alexa. The company's job site shows close to 1,100 open positions on a variety of Alexa-focused teams. Voice-activated assistants appear to be the Next Big Thing in the tech world, and Amazon is competing with a who's who of tech giants, including Apple, Microsoft, Google and more. Interestingly, Amazon and Microsoft recently formed a pact that will see the two company's digital assistants gain the ability to talk to one another.
My wife has to ask me to take out the garbage 3 or 4 times before getting frustrated and picking up a handheld device (frying pan).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unless you actually look at it. I sniffed the wire on Alexa. Once a day there is a small packet exchange. Occasionally that small packet exchange will result in a moderately large download. I am assuming checking for updates and occasionally updating. Other then that, it NEVER initiates traffic without the alert keyword (Alexa by default), and every time it does, it is accompanied by the devices saying something, and what it "heard" is saved in the app for you to look at. I can not say it will always be this way, as it self updates, nor can I say that "deleting" the recordings actually deletes anything other then your list...
But from my personal testing, it seems to be playing very fair right now.