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Friday, February 24, 2017

Looking More Closely at a Voice Retail Channel

Is Amazon’s Alexa a threat to rival retailers?
The author starts a conversation remarking on how much her family has taken to voice ordering.     Does every kind of assistant insert their 'voice' into an interaction?  A sales voice is meant to sell. A work voice could be 'focus'.  Other adjustable voices?

In Retailwire: 

  " ... After hearing about the girl who loves Alexa and watching my own kids, I have a feeling the human tendency is going to be to relate to anything that is moderately human as human — even when they know it’s not. I’m also certain that retailers struggling to compete against Amazon need to think a lot more about what kind of personality and trust people are projecting on to services like Alexa. Increasingly, they may find they are not competing against some wacky bald guy and an internet behemoth. They are competing against Alexa, my kids’ favorite disembodied voice. ... " .

 I no longer have children around,  so have not seen this.  We order a bit vocally, but not very much.   But is this aspect of AI,  known since the 70s, to trust the human-like as well.  See the book Media Equation conversation (below)  for more ...

Discussion is interesting there too.

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