Tag Archive for: voice

Amazon workers allegedly have a chat room about ‘amusing’ recordings?!

/in /by

Bloomberg have a report out that highlighted the human labour that goes into manufacturing and improving the Amazon Echo. Amazon have contractors and full time employees working on the Amazon Echo. They’re all over the globe and tasked with reviewing and transcribing clips. Clips that are of conversations between users and Alexa. According to the report from Bloomberg, humans are said to annotate interactions to help identify phrases. Phrases such as “Taylor Swift” that might otherwise be meaningless to the software.

“We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone.

Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it,”an Amazon spokesman told Bloomberg.

Amazon Echo Chat Room

According Bloomberg, as a result of collating all this data, Amazon workers have a chat room. This chat room is intended for asking for help if they can’t make out a word or phrase. However, allegedly, they also share “amusing” recordings. Furthermore, an Amazon worker, told Bloomberg that each member of the team will listen to as much as 100 clips a day. Clips that Alexa has mistaken or unintentionally activated. Bloomberg have reported that one of these workers will review as many as 1,000 clips in a day! (A full 9hr working day shift)

In cases where the Alexa has tripped unintentionally, there has also been some serious recordings. According to the report, two workers who have spoken to Bloomberg. Who believe they heard a sexual assault taking place. Furthermore another two workers told Bloomberg that they were given guidance not to intervene. As Amazon didn’t consider it the company’s place to intervene in cases like these.

Full report with Bloomberg here

So, keep up to date with everything How To Kill An Hour! By signing up to our newsletter by clicking here!

Also, let us know what you think of the show by clicking here!

While you’re there, Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see more amazing ways to kill time!

Follow us on Twitch by clicking here!

Talisker Tasting Experience

Whiskey With Alexa!

/in /by

Voice is going to be HUGE in 2019 and there are more and more usages that companies are discovering every day. One of the interesting ones that we’ve used is from Diageo. It’s available on Amazon’s Alexa and it’s called Talisker Tasting Experience. Once asking Alexa to open Talisker Tasting, consumers will be asked to name the Whiskey that they own. Be that the Talisker Skye, Talisker Storm or Talisker 10 year old Single Malt. Once informed Alexa will begin an audio journey. Consequently drinkers will be taken through an auditory journey of how to taste the Scotch and get to know the richness and complexity of flavours from within the Talisker range. Furthermore after completing their drink, tasters will be invited asked to ask questions about the story of their drink, or flavours of Scotch that they’re interested in.

The final stage invites the taster to ask questions about the story behind their drink or flavours of Scotch they may like to try in the future.

“Talisker is a brand with an extremely rich heritage, produced by the sea on the Isle of Skye. When approaching this project, we were looking to bring elements of this location and the fantastic tasting tours at the Talisker Distillery into people’s homes.”

“Voice is the perfect technology to do just this and provide an enhanced brand experience by putting the consumer, product and brand at the centre of a tasting, in a completely seamless and non-intrusive way.” Benjamin Lickfett, Head of Technology and Innovation at Diageo

Additional Apps

This isn’t the only Alexa based app from Diageo either! They also have  ‘The Bar’ which was released in December 2017. However, this app is specifically for the Echo Show. This app will highlight how to master mixology techniques and shop for ingredients. All through voice led advice. Furthermore  Happy Hour Amazon Alexa Skill uses voice to provide cocktail recipes. Consequently, the app will even recommend bars to drinkers, specific bars to enjoy a Diageo cocktail.

While, voice is getting really really good and we’re intrigued to find out how Diageo will develop their voice technology. It’s worked really well for the Talisker Tasting Experience and we cannot wait to see more!

Download Talisker Tasting Experience here!

Purchase some Talisker Whiskey here!

Listen to the guys chatting about this by clicking here! 

Keep up to date with everything How To Kill An Hour by signing up to our newsletter by clicking here!

Let us know what you think of the show by clicking here!

Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see more amazing ways to kill time!

Also, follow us on Twitch by clicking here!