For years, Google has called themselves a mobile-first company as they were transitioning their systems to meet the growing trend of smartphones. These mobile devices are still incredibly important to the growth of Google (as well as other websites), but then the company shifted focus towards AI and now call themselves an AI-first company. This shows you how important artificial intelligence will be in our electronics over the next 5+ years, so it’s no surprise that a new report says that Amazon, one of Google’s fiercest competitors, is currently designing an AI chip to improve Alexa.
Amazon continues to dominate the smart speaker market, but Google’s market share is growing fast. We have yet to see how Samsung’s Bixby smart speaker will perform and whether or not Microsoft will get serious about smart speakers powered by Cortana. Apple recently released their product, the HomePod, but it’s so expensive that very few people will be able to outfit every room in their house with one. So while all of these products do similar tasks, the winner will be the one who performs those tasks the best and has extensive third-party support.
Unique features is also something that could give one company the edge in the newly competitive market. According to a report from The Information, that new feature will be the integration of artificial intelligence. Amazon acquired chip designer Annapurna Labs back in 2015, so that could be the team working on this new chip. The report says the goal of having this A.I. chip in their plethora of Echo devices, and other hardware powered by Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant, is to make Alexa respond more quickly.
With these Amazon Echo products powered by Amazon’s in-house AI chip, Alexa will be able to handle certain tasks without ever sending a request to the cloud for processing. This will result in faster response times for some of the most basic and common voice commands.
Source: The Information