Amazon Echo can fact-check politicians

Amazon Echo wants to keep the US presidential candidates and possibly any other politician in check with its new feature: fact-checking. Duke Reporters’ Lab introduced the new Echo skill that’ll make it easier for you to check if the candidates are just speaking lies. Echo gets its data from PolitFact, FactCheck.org, and the Washington Post. It isn’t a perfect feature and you’ll have to go through an opening spiel to get right to asking it questions. Duke emphasizes that you need to mention major keywords to get a correct answer from it.

Source: Engadget

‘Actions on Google’ to open Google Assistant to third-party developers

If Google plans to unseat the Amazon Echo in its own category, it’ll need all the help it can get. And that’s what it is planning to do with the Actions on Google program launching in December. This program will allow developers to build “Actions” for Google Assistant (akin to the 3,000+ “skills” of Amazon’s Alexa). There will be two flavors to this: Direct Actions and Conversation Actions. Direct is similar to what you can do with Siri, Alexa, and even Google’s own Google Now voice assistant. You ask it for information, schedule a meeting, etc.

Conversations, on the other hand and as its name suggests, is more of a back and forth. One example given at the Google event is when Scott Huffman tried to get an Uber and had Google Assistant pass the conversation off to Uber to finalize the request. And that’s where developers would need to work with Google. Aside from the Google plans to release an Embedded Google Assistant software development kit to let tinkerers load Google Assistant on things like Raspberry Pi as well as for other hardware manufacturers to have Assistant in other products.

Source: The Verge

Amazon looks to fill many more positions on its Alexa team

Amazon is getting even more aggressive with developing the Alexa voice assistant technology with its current hiring spree. At the moment, Amazon is looking to fill 399 positions for different locations. Some of the jobs include data engineers, product managers, and machine learning scientists with locations ranging from Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, to Tempe, Arizona, to Sunnyvale, California, among others. The hiring push comes on the heels of the expansion of Amazon’s voice-controlled Echo speakers.

Source: Recode

Google rumoured to be pricing Amazon Echo competitor at US$50 less

There’s a new rumour floating around that Google plans to launch its own Amazon Echo-like speaker during its October 4 event. The big thing about Google Home though is it’ll be US$50 cheaper than the Echo at $129 (around CA$170) when it comes out. It’ll will have personalized base covers, which were first seen at Google I/O back in May will be seen in the final device. This voice-activated speaker is designed to be used across rooms to ask Google questions, stream music, check your schedule, and the like.

Source: Android Police