Alexa is already multilingual but Amazon wants to make her more fluent, report says
Alexa is brushing up on her language skills.
Amazon's voice-enabled digital assistant will reportedly soon become an on-the-go real-time language translator.
Alexa's English, German, and Japanese skills will need to be rounded out when she becomes what Yahoo reports as a "multilingual assistant who can help in almost any situation."
An Alexa "skill" already translates short sentences in English into 36 languages including Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian, Polish, Thai and many more — but just short phrases and words. Context and a more sophisticated take on culture will make the assistant useful in real-time moments, as Yahoo reported based on several unnamed sources close to the project.
For example, Alexa could be used at a wedding to translate a speech or when needing to order at a restaurant while traveling abroad.
Alexa's super translation abilities would mean the Amazon product would head out into the world with users — not just stay at home on a counter waiting to turn on lights and play music while you cook dinner.
We reached out to Amazon to hear more about the possible Alexa language upgrade.
Until then, "Alexa, how do you say, 'This sounds like something out of Star Trek,' in Klingon?"
Topics Amazon Artificial Intelligence
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
