Heena Sharma Blog

  Digital assistant Amazon Alexa can now help users in India with COVID-19 -related information, including details of nearest testing centres and vaccination points as well as answer queries about inoculation. In 2020, Alexa was able to share information about COVID-19 related symptoms and cases in India, a statement said. Amazon Alexa is now updated with the latest COVID-19 related features for users in India. "Now, Alexa will be able to provide information about testing and vaccination centres, as well as information on vaccination availability, COVID-19 helpline numbers, details to contribute towards COVID-19 relief, and much more. The information is sourced from CoWIN portal, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare website as well as MapmyIndia," the statement said. Amazon has teamed up with MapmyIndia to help users find the nearest COVID-19 testing centre along with the travel distance. Read More

Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening. Sometimes, someone is. Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices. The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa’s understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands. The Alexa voice review process, described by seven people who have worked on the program, highlights the often-overlooked human role in training software algorithms. In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software...

The use of virtual assistants in the workplace is growing manifold with 25 per cent of digital workers likely to use a virtual employee assistant daily by 2021, as against less than 2 per cent in 2019, said a global research and advisory firm. According to a report by Gartner, Inc, the contact centre was the pilot and testing ground for many adopters of virtual assistants (VAs), but with the democratisation of artificial intelligence (AI) and the development of accurate and clever conversational user interfaces (UIs), different types of VA have arisen: virtual personal assistants (VPAs), virtual customer assistants (VCAs) and virtual employee assistants (VEAs). We expect VEAs to be used by an increasing number of organisations over the next three years, said Annette Jump, senior director at Gartner. "Industries such as insurance and financial services are showing strong interest in piloting VEAs internally. We've also witnessed VAs being used in IT, customer servic...

The recently announced changes in regulations for e-commerce firms with foreign investment may have sent Amazon into a tizzy, but it certainly did not stop the e-commerce giant from stepping up its hiring efforts in the country. With 1,300 job openings in India, Amazon has the highest number of listings for Asia-pacific region on its website, reported The Times of India. This is way ahead than China (467 job openings), Japan (381) and Singapore (174). Barring the United States, only Germany has as many openings as India. Most of the hiring is expected to be in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. It is not yet clear whether the openings are only for Amazon.com or also for Amazon Prime video, its voice assistant Alexa and the firm's other horizons as well. The government's move to tighten norms has hit Amazon and Flipkart the hardest as the new regulations bar online marketplaces with foreign investment to sell products of companies where they hold stakes as well ...