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One of the most recent unveilings of Amazon is the Echosim.io, a site that mimics the functionality of an Amazon Echo speaker. In others words, the Alexa voice assistant technology is now available on desktops.
Amazon’s Alexa has already charmed thousands of users in devices like the Amazon Echo or its smaller siblings, Amazon Tap and the Echo Dot. But for those who don’t have any of Amazon’s gadgets were missing out – but not for much longer.
The idea behind Echosim was first developed by Sam Machin during a 2015 hackathon; later, it was dubbed Alexa in the Browser. How exactly does it work, though?
Tapping into Alexa’s potential on desktop systems is really easy. You just have to access Echosim.io and you don’t even have to create a new account. Sign in with your Amazon username and password, hover your mouse over the microphone button, and simply talk to the voice assistant.
Evidently, throwing questions at the AI (artificial intelligence) requires a working microphone, but that shouldn’t be a problem in this day and time. But the integration will benefit more than just the customer sector.
“Developers worldwide can use Echosim to experience Alexa,” said Glenn Cameron, the developer marketing manager for Amazon Alexa. And, truth be told, the app has landed at the perfect time.
Why? Because it’s a worthy competitor for Apple’s Siri software development kit (SDK), which the company has already announced. The SDK is a tool that will help coders improve their apps with the help of Siri’s features.
Furthermore, inside sources from the company reveal that Apple will soon enable Siri on the Apple TV set-top box, which would turn out to be a strong counterproposal to Amazon’s Echo.
Amazon is still in the lead, however, because Siri will be landing on OS X only some time later this year. More than the two major tech players, other companies have started tapping into speech recognition abilities.
Google, for instance, has also made this feature available on desktop systems. Some versions of Google Docs already support the Google Assistant tech, and the search giant is looking forward to giving third-party developers the keys to its treasure chest.
Image Source: Amazon
