Amazon has announced Alexa Custom Assistant, a new software solution for automakers in India. The Alexa Custom Assistant is available starting today anywhere Alexa is supported: U.S., Canada, U.K., Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil, with additional countries to follow.
The Alexa Custom Assistant is built directly on Alexa technology, providing companies access to world class, always-improving voice AI technology, customized with unique wake word, voice, skills, and capabilities.
The brand’s assistant also coexists and cooperates with Alexa, providing customers the benefits of an intelligent assistant that is their product and services expert, while Alexa provides the familiar experiences they already know. The Alexa Custom Assistant reduces the cost and complexity of building intelligent assistants into automobiles, consumer electronics, mobile applications, smart properties, video games, and a variety of other digital experiences.
Global automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is the first Alexa Custom Assistant customer, and has already begun the planning process for the development of an FCA-branded intelligent assistant for integration in select vehicle models. The company’s work builds on existing Alexa integrations in its vehicles around the world.
The Alexa Custom Assistant is based on constantly-improving spoken language understanding, intent routing, and response orchestration to provide a natural, intelligent, and conversational interface. Custom wake words are created using the same state-of-the-art process used for developing the Alexa wake word and deployed through the high-accuracy Alexa wake word engine. To create natural voice responses, each brand can choose their own unique voice. Alexa’s voice science experts will guide them throughout the recording process and develop the voice using advanced machine learning algorithms. Finally, developers can leverage Alexa’s pre-built capabilities such as local search, weather, timers, and alarms, to further accelerate time to market.
By reducing the burden of building the core capabilities of an intelligent assistant, companies can focus their time and resources on creating unique capabilities that delight their customers. The Alexa Custom Assistant makes this easy by enabling developers to leverage the familiar Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) technology to build bespoke capabilities tailored to their brand and accessed through a unique wake word. For example, custom skills could be used to control a device like increasing the incline on a treadmill, changing the channel on a set top box, or starting a robot vacuum. They can also automate and scale customer interactions, such as providing troubleshooting guidance and helping customers learn more about device capabilities. This robust development environment allows each Alexa Custom Assistant implementation to be tailored to the individual brand, product, and customer needs.
Alexa Custom Assistant allows the brand’s assistant and Alexa to cooperate to fulfill the customer’s request. This feature is enabled by advanced AI to ensure each request is routed to the assistant that can provide the most relevant and delightful experience. For example, if a customer asks Alexa to roll down a car window, or how to troubleshoot a device, the request will be routed to the brand’s assistant. If a customer asks the brand’s assistant to play an audio book, the request will be routed to Alexa.
Alexa’s presence alongside the brand’s assistant also provides customers access to tens of thousands of Alexa skills and integrations such as smart home, entertainment, trivia & games, shopping, food & drinks, mobility services, and many others. Further, because the Alexa Custom Assistant is built from the ground up with privacy in mind and using Alexa technology, Amazon manages the data and applies the same rigorous privacy and security policies in place for Alexa.