AMAZON is planning a dramatic update for its virtual assistant, Alexa, which will enable the AI to remember important dates and snippets of information you have previously discussed. This is designed to make conversation more natural.
Alexa will be able to recall information you’ve previously directed her to remember, as well as have more natural conversations no longer require every command to begin with “Alexa”.
The new developments were announced by head of the Alexa Brain group, Ruhi Sarikaya, who spoke at the World Wide Web Conference in Lyon, France earlier this week.
Sarikaya explained that the Alexa Brain initiative is focused on improving the AI assistant’s ability to track context and memory within previous dialogue.
The memory update will be arriving soon in the United States, Sarikaya confirmed.
Amazon is working on a number of improvements to its talkative AI assistant, Alexa
When the update arrives, Alexa will be able to recall any information you have asked her and retrieve it later on.
For example, Echo owners might direct Alexa to remember an important date by telling the assistant: “Alexa, remember that Nelson’s birthday is May 1.”
Alexa will then reply, “Okay, I’ll remember that Nelson’s birthday is May 1.”
This allows users to offload important information to Alexa, which makes the virtual assistant more personal.
Like the forthcoming update for Alexa, Google Assistant users can trigger the memory function by saying, “Hey Google, remember that my cane is in the front foyer closet”.
To retrieve the information, Google Assistant users should ask where, or what they have asked the smart assistant to remember.
For example, you can ask “Hey Google, where is my cane?”
