As you probably know by today, Facebook announced Portal yesterday, a smart display for video calls with Alexa integrated.

There are tons of articles on the web related to the announcement summing up three fundamentals: the privacy scandals the company has been surrounded this year, why choosing Alexa was a smart decision at this point and the focus on visual as oppose to another smart speaker. I’ll leave links at this episode notes. Go and check them out if you haven’t.

You might think, what is she going to say that hasn’t been said by the other stories. Hear me out, I have something to add to the conversation, pun intended.

Another bullet directed at Snapchat

I think this is also another shot at Snapchat. The company has been relentless in their competition with Snapchat (Instagram stories, Facebook stories and now Instagram name tag) and this is no exception. Portal smart display landing page first feature listed is Smart camera and sound followed by private by design. Sound familiar from Snapchat camera first mantra, right? Let’s continue.

Portal is adding VR lenses to the calls, directed to a more leisure focused model that Facebook knows very well, which can also give them a differentiator point among the competitors. Targeting an audience that’s already used to lenses, that use them on a daily basis, combined with voice activation provided by the very familiar (homie) Alexa is the recipe for snapping (again, pun intended) those young users into the giant blue platform.

One detail that also deserves attention:

For added security, Smart Camera and Smart Sound use AI technology that runs locally on Portal, not on Facebook servers. Portal’s camera doesn’t use facial recognition and doesn’t identify who you are.

I talked in the episode about the compression algorithms the Amazon Alexa team is working and the effects it might have for the voice activated internet of thing feature, and this quote, proves that Facebook is very aware of the users reaction to the privacy scandals, what users think and is alerting them: it runs local, does not call Facebook servers. Maybe Facebook is the first company to provide a truly offline smart assistant experience. Wait, it has Alexa built-in, never mind.

Payments through AI messaging service + social network = better smart display?

As I alway say, whether this strategy is going to play out or not, only time will tell. Truth is, Facebook wants in in the smart speaker race and in the home. And they want it now, as much they couldn’t wait any longer. I would expect that the patent Facebook filled in 2016 for conversational payments (Processing payment transactions using artificial intelligence messaging services), plus all the social network expertise will come together with Portal and Portal+ for a product that might change the course of the smart display race.

Let me know what you think in the comments of this post, on Twitter replying to @voicefirstlabs or on Instagram @voicefirstweekly. My name is Mari, I’m your host, stop scrolling down now and go and share this, like and engage. You know why? Because you love it and I love it. Best of the Tuesdays for all of you. I’ll be back tomorrow!

This week Google Assistant had several updates important enough to make it to my notes for episodes. Let’s start reviewing them.

Monetization

First, monetization, just a week after Amazon announced consumables API for Alexa Google released the ability to sell digital goods, a way for Action creators to offer digital subscriptions and goods to consumers. The novelty is in the digital part, as the API already offered physical products.

As a follow up the Google team also introduced a new sign-in service for the Assistant that allows developers to log in and link their accounts. According to TechCrunch: Starbucks has already integrated this feature into its Assistant experience to give users access to their rewards account. Adding the new Sign-In for the Assistant has almost doubled its conversion rate.

Book rides with Lyft or Uber

Starting this past Thursday Google Assistant users will be able to book rides through Uber or Lyft. Siri and Alexa already let you book rides on Uber and Alexa also in Lyft for some time now. Considering that Google has the map advantage, or, actually the ecosystem of apps advantage it was about time.

Voice access publicly available, an important step for accessibility.

The next update is Voice Access made publicly available this week. The app is tied directly to the Google Voice assistant, designed to make it easier for users to navigate a wider range of tasks via voice command instead of manual actions. It accomplishes that by letting users essentially translates a button push, page scroll or item selection into a voice command that Google Assistant can easily follow.

The Google Assistant mobile app gets more visual, aligning with smart displays

Google Assistant also got more visual last week: with a visual redesign of its Assistant experience on phones. Bringing more and larger visuals to the Assistant. The update aligns what users were already seeing on smart displays.

In addition to the visual redesign of the Assistant, Google also today announced a number of new features for developers. Unsurprisingly, one part of this announcement focuses on allowing developers to build their own visual Assistant experiences. Google calls these “rich responses” and provides developers with a set of pre-made visual components that they can easily use to extend their Assistant actions.

Acquisitions

Finally, Google acquired AI chatbot startup Onward, a “powered chatbot startup that creates a range of automated customer service and sales tools for business usage.”

That’s all for today. I miss some, but I think these are the most important ones, it shows how they are moving quickly in the space heads on. Exciting times to be alive. Hope the best day for you all.

I’m Mari, your host for VoiceFirst Weekly daily briefing, you can find me on Twitter as @voicefirstlabs and on Instagram as @voicefirstweekly./ You have a great day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

The University of Adelaide built a chatbot to solve the dreading problem of thousands and thousands of students receiving their Admission Rank on the same day. The chatbot was built using only Oracle Autonomous Mobile Cloud Enterprise, a sheet with the formulas for the calculations for the admission rank and a list of high schools whose students are eligible for bonus points schemes. It’s a very precise task that the bot performed very well and saved the university staff from thousands of calls from students the same day wanting to know their bonus points. The chatbot was deployed to Messenger, because that’s where students are. “We capitalized on the engagement we were already having across Facebook”. Which at the same time potentiated students sharing their scores on the Facebook platform.

The prospect management team was shocked at how many students embraced the chatbot in its first year. “We would have been happy with 200,” Cherry says. “Instead, the chatbot held 2,100 unique conversations with students.”

A very illustrative example of conversational done right, for a specific task, for the users and context first. Resulting in a win for students and university staff alike.

The future is without doubt conversational and has a voice.

Voice Assistants have been at the forefront of parents almost since the beginning. From a kid who prayed to Alexa, to parents wanting the assistant to request thank you, prompting a response from Amazon. The latest update to Alexa address though questions saving parents difficult conversations with their kids (This is, of course, an overstatement). A recent update to the virtual assistant tool comes with a new mode called FreeTime in which Alexa knows to answer certain questions — like say, ‘Where do babies come from?’ —differently. In instances like that, Alexa can now simply respond ‘ask a grown up.’

Amazon even worked with child psychologists on some of the new answers that Alexa can give. According to the company, Alexa is constantly using questions and requests to ensure that she’s “always getting smarter.”

“Alexa isn’t intended to be a replacement parent or caregiver,” the company said in a statement. “So we believe it’s important we treat these answers with empathy and point the child to a trusted adult when applicable.”

One step further, parents can also set times during which Alexa will tell kids “Sorry I can’t play right now, try again later,” should their kids attempt to use the tool when they should be sleeping or doing homework. The FreeTime update will even encourage kids to say please and thank you before and after asking for things.

When asked Alexa, what happens when you die, she replies with: Sorry, I’m not sure.

FreeTime can be turned on using the Alexa app and is available on the  Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Dot devices.

Alexa, saving parents since 2018. 

Mari

I’m Mari, your host for VoiceFirst Weekly daily briefing, you can find me on Twitter as @voicefirstlabs and on Instagram as @voicefirstweekly. Subscribe, like, share, engage. This is what we are here for! You have a great day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Amazon announced yesterday that developers will be able to start a request in one skill, then have it fulfilled in another. The feature is officially called Skills Connections and is in Preview. As part of the blog post announcement Amazon outlined examples of connections available like printing by HP and schedule a reservation by OpenTable and later schedule a taxi reservation by Uber. It’s a way to pass information between skills to simplify customer tasks. For now users can only use printing with HP, Uber and OpenTable reservations.

Skill Connections is launching into a developer preview. This is highly expected and I’m sure will be highly regarded by developers and users.

What is the biggest take from this feature? For me is marketing. Once more skills can invoke others, imagine the ramifications, you could directly pass from a game to sponsor skill content and then back to your game again, providing a medium for both brands and developers of awareness and monetization. From all the latest announcements the Alexa team has made recently, this is set to have the biggest impact in skills discoverability. Keep a close eye on this one and the first applications built with it.

I’m Mari, your host for VoiceFirst Weekly daily briefing, you can find me on Twitter as @voicefirstlabs and on Instagram as @voicefirstweekly. Subscribe, like, share, engage. This is what we are here for! You have a great day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.