Tell me what you ask Alexa and I’ll tell you where you are from
[ad_1]
Four years ago Alexa arrived in Italy for the first time. Whether for the easy-to-remember word, or for the hype, it’s hard to find someone today who doesn’t know what you’re referring to if you say the name of Amazon’s voice assistant. Amazon’s numbers on the adoption and use of the virtual assistant show constant growth, also thanks to the parallel affirmation in Italy of the e-commerce giant and the ecosystem of Amazon Prime services.
On the moon with the voice
If Alexa now works (also) in Space
by Carlo Lavalle
Alexa, set a timer!
2022 was a particularly good year for the voice assistant, they say by Amazon, with 8 billion recorded interactions between users and Alexa on their devices. They are almost half of the total interactions (17 billion) that took place from 2018 to today. Amazon records and analyzes data on the commands users give to Alexa. So we know that in practice, Italians have set about 800 million alarms and timers – by far the most used function – but also 120 million reminders, 45 million shopping lists. They also used Alexa to call or video call around 28 million times. Then follow the weather forecast and help in the kitchen, with 8 million recipes requested from the virtual assistant. The most frequent? Carbonara, pancakes and tiramisu.
“We have seen that Germans use clock functions a lot just like Italians,” Gian Maria Visconti, Alexa’s Country Manager in Italy told Italian Tech, suggesting that Alexa’s numbers confirm some classic stereotypes about the differences with Northern Europe. “In Germany, however, the most requested functions are reminders and alarm clocks, to be punctual, with us they are the timers, which we set mainly in the kitchen”.
The request to play music is also very popular, with 400 million songs requested from Alexa over the course of 2022. In the top 3 of the virtual assistant’s juke box there are Farfalle di Sangiovanni, Dove si Balla by Dargen D’amico and finally Broglie, the song of Mahmood and Blanco.
Voice assistants
Alexa will speak in the voice of the dead
by Antonio Dini
Big in Molise
The data collected by Amazon also gives an idea of the geography of digital behaviors in Italy. Lombardy is the first Italian region for the number of active users, that is, of those who use Alexa every day, but it is Campania that uses it more than any other Italian region for the management of the smart home and smart devices. The greatest growth in users who used Alexa for the first time in 2022 was recorded in Molise, while Rome is the province with the highest number of interactions during the year. Agrigento instead goes to the first place for the growth in the number of interactions compared to 2021, with a + 63% year on year.
Amazon’s bad idea of letting the dead talk
by Riccardo Luna
“The pandemic experience has certainly changed the digital habits of users all over the world, but Italy has particularly surprised us by the acceleration of the adoption of new products. The best-selling Alexa devices, in Italy as well as in the world, are the Echo Dot “, explains Visconti again.” Since the Echo Shows were announced, they have also met with great success with the public and the sales of devices with screens in the last year have grown by 150% “.
Automation and connected home
If simple requests and direct commands (“Alexa, wake me up at 8”, so to speak) still make up the bulk of the interactions with the voice assistant, Amazon has observed a marked increase in more complex interactions.
“30% of the registered actions come from“ routines ”, that is, they are automatisms programmed directly by users, who make an increasingly advanced use of the platform for home automation and connected homes”, says Visconti. “I’m not just talking about skills that respond to a command, but precisely about automatisms that do not require an input, with an action that follows, for example, the reading of a value from a sensor or a dedicated skill that follows the completion of an operation by a connected device “.
After all, the smart home is a sector in which Alexa plays a leading role. In particular, the arrival of Matter, the new standard for home automation which Google and Apple also adhere to, is for Amazon the real turning point that can push even more the use of Alexa as a hub of the connected home.
“We are all now clear that there will not be a single winner in the AI and connected home challenge, but interaction and interoperability will be needed to grow the market for everyone”, explains Visconti. “Amazon has welcomed Matter with open arms, because it drastically simplifies one of the biggest hurdles to adopting connected home devices, and that is the initial configuration of the products.”
Always smarter assistant
The interactions that Amazon records are not only for marketing purposes, on the contrary they are fundamental to power the machine learning systems that allow Alexa to become more and more intelligent and effective.
“When Alexa replies that she doesn’t know something, or when the user blocks her immediately after a command, she is automatically learning. In fact, the system works in such a way as to transform every ‘error’, missed response, or block of action into an element for automatic AI training ”, explains Visconti. “For example, if Alexa tunes to a wrong radio station because it confuses it with a foreign namesake, and the user stops it because it is not the right radio, that interaction is recorded and will be used to teach Alexa the error, in so as not to repeat it in the future “.
This means, in other words, that Alexa is not only always listening but also records many other metadata relating to the interaction modes, such as the time between a command and the sudden stop of the user in the event of an error. . And on this point the question arises: how do these functions combine with the protection of privacy?
“We are very careful not to record any user identification data”, replies Visconti. “After all, we are not interested in what is specifically requested or profiling the user, but rather in understanding the mechanics of the interaction, for which it is not necessary to know who made the request, but how he made it and what it is was its outcome “.
[ad_2]
Source link
