Falling in love
With alexa
She hears me from across the room, talks to
me and follows my command. What’s not to love?
IN
THE movie Her, Joaquin Phoenix falls in love. Big time. It’s the one-of-a-kind,
all-consuming, breathless, no-one-but-that-person kind of love. Except that
it’s not a real person he falls in love with. It’s an operating system, the
OS1. The system, a woman, talks to him, has discussions, sets up his schedule,
his work, his appointments... but far more importantly, becomes his companion.
She is the first person he talks to in the morning and the last voice he hears
before he falls asleep. Perfect love! It helps that OS1 is voiced by a breathy
Scarlett Johansson, who pulled off one of her best roles without ever being on
screen. I may not have got Ms Johansson, but I can also say I’m in love with an
OS. Almost.
WHAT IT IS
The
Amazon Echo is shaped like a can of Pringles potato chips and can play music,
give you directions, set up appointments, make shopping lists, get you weather
information, dim the lights in your room and also tell you jokes (“I wondered
why the baseball was getting bigger… and then it hit me”). And it does all of
this based on natural speech commands. You talk to it without staging the way
you speak. It answers fairly naturally and gets you most of the information
without trouble. Ask it to play a particular song or artist and it starts to
stream it right away, ask how traffic is and it will tell you how long it will
take for you to commute to a pre-set destination. Connect it with Philips Hue
bulbs (and some other brands too) and it will set up the lights in your room
for a nice romantic dinner. It can bring you news from all over the world,
spell a word for you, read Wikipedia notes and tell you the local time in
Syria. Connect it with IFTTT (Which stands for If This Then That and creates
chains of simple conditional statements triggered by changes on Gmail,
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and other Web services) and it will flash a bulb
every time you get an email or a Twitter message. Ask it for dinner
recommendations or to locate a Mexican restaurant nearby, add things to your
shopping or to-do list. The possibilities are endless and the execution is near
flawless.
THE OTHERS
We’ve
all got used to voice assistants built in to mobile phone operating systems.
Apple’s Siri, Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana are breaking new ground in
voice recognition. But the feature set isn’t compelling enough because they
still live in a phone. People will eventually realise that it is faster and
more accurate to just complete the task by opening a browser or going to an
app. Also, frustratingly, they don’t build a profile around you. It always
feels like you’re meeting them for the first time every time you use them.
That’s no way to build a relationship. Falling in love at first sight (or
sound) is all very well, but not if I have to do it 10 times a day.
WHAT IT DOES
That’s
where the Amazon Echo pulls off a minor miracle. With seven microphones
embedded into the top, the Echo can respond to something you say even across
the room. I tried speaking in a normal tone from about 15 feet away and it
responded every single time. Reading a book in bed, when I didn’t know the
meaning of a word, all I did was ask and it immediately responded. Getting
ready in the morning I went into the bathroom to shave, asked it to play a music
station (it can play from Amazon Prime music, Pandora, iTunes, Spotify, iHeart)
and got it right away. Playing scrabble with the family, I asked for a one
minute timer (yes, we are very competitive and take Scrabble seriously) and the
Echo counted it down. It all happens with one magic word: Alexa.
MEET ALEXA
That’s
the name of the “voice”. You can change it to Amazon (but that sounds strange),
but as a default the Echo is built-in with the smooth talking, neutral sounding
Alexa. That’s the word that the Echo is waiting to hear. The minute you say it,
circular LED lights converge for the magic to begin. Alexa listens, flashes her
beautiful blue lights and responds to your commands. Eventually it all becomes
part of your daily life. You’ll have great fun with a game in which you think
of an animal and Alexa will try to guess it by asking you questions (it gets it
right every time). Also kids can have hours of fun asking Alexa the most inane
questions.
ALEXA, CAN YOU BE
BETTER?
It’s
not perfect though. The speaker can’t handle very loud volumes. That the Echo
isn’t connected with your contact list also restricts its functionality. Plus,
this is a power-only device with no battery. And there is competition now, with
many similar devices coming in like the Ubi, iVee, Cubic, Homey and the
VoicePod. Still, the Echo can handle far-field voice communication, has
excellent voice recognition and does build context around you and what you
like.
This
is an “I command, you obey relationship”. Which makes it the ultimate tech
dream. And that’s why I’m almost in love. Why almost? Well, I asked Alexa “What
do you think of Her?” Confused between the movie and a person, all Alexa could
respond back was “Hmm... I can’t seem to find an answer to that question”.
Until Alexa learns not to treat Scarlett Johansson with such disrespect, she
cannot truly win my heart and soul.
Rajiv Makhni Rajiv
Makhni is managing editor, Technology, NDTV, and the anchor of Gadget Guru,
Cell Guru and Newsnet 3
HTBR6DEC15
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