Amazon is seeking to get its Alexa virtual assistant into more third party devices with the announcement that it has now opened up the SDK for its Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit. The development platform was first announced near the start of the year, when it was available for select headphone devices from Bose, Jabra, and…
Apple is hoping to leverage last week’s excitement about its new product announcements into some extra enthusiasm for its HomePod smart home speaker system, with a software update enhancing its capabilities. It’s essentially an AI upgrade. On the HomePod, Siri, Apple’s virtual AI assistant, can now search for songs by their lyrics, and perform other…
“…BMW Group emphasized its artificial intelligence, asserting that it can learn the driver’s habits, allowing it to offer directions based on a command like, ‘Take me home.’” BMW cars will get their own virtual assistant early next year, dubbed the “BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant.” The system will allow drivers to adjust various in-car settings on…
Google appears to be working on a new facial recognition system for its mobile devices, according to a new XDA-Developers report. It’s mostly conjecture, but it’s based on pretty solid footing. Essentially, XDA-Developers has been digging around in code for Google Assistant, Google’s AI-driven virtual helper, and found snippets suggesting that a mysterious feature codenamed…
“Consumers are ready for conversational banking, and ENACOMM’s secure and convenient solution allows financial institutions not counted among the megabanks to offer technology-enhanced customer interactions that rival those presented by the biggest players.” -David Spore, President, Alcor Consulting ENACOMM has another distribution partner for its Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA) and ENACOMM Financial Suite (EFS) offerings. Alcor…
Two Canadian credit unions are now testing a system that lets customers do their banking through Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based virtual assistant. The technology comes by way of Vancouver-based FinTech specialist Central 1, which developed it in collaboration with San Francisco design agency Point One Digital. Essentially, the idea is to make Alexa a customer service…
“Speak With Me technology will be available for deployment across any automated vehicle fleet running AWare regardless of vehicle type or automated driving system.” A new partnership could help to bring artificial intelligence to more cars. The AI technology comes by way of Speak With Me, whose eponymous platform revolves around a conversational voice assistant.…
PayPal has taught Siri a new skill: Apple’s voice-based AI assistant can now send peer-to-peer money transactions using PayPal. Announcing the skill in a blog post, PayPal framed it as a development timed for the busy holiday shopping period, noting that the company’s management expects over 17 million P2P transactions to be made over its service…