Amazon debuts Alexa, home-based virtual assistant to take on Apple's Siri
23cm tall, Amazon's stay-at-home virtual assistant is set to challenge Apple's mobile helper in battle to maximise use of smartphone systems
Internet retail giant Amazon has introduced a home virtual assistant always at the ready to answer questions, fetch news, play music or help with to-do lists.
The assistant, referred to as "Alexa", is accessed via the Echo device that is essentially a small set of speakers and microphones.
Alexa can be verbally asked to perform a range of tasks, and is seen as a challenge to "Siri", the virtual assistant in Apple's mobile devices.
Echo became available on an invitation-only basis at a price of US$199, or US$99 for those who pay for the company's Prime subscription service.
"Echo's brain is in the cloud, running on Amazon Web Services so it continually learns and adds more functionality over time," Amazon said at a webpage where people could request invitations to buy the Bluetooth-enabled speakers.
"The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences."
A demonstration video online revealed a female voice responding to questions or commands preceded by the trigger word "Alexa", homage to the ancient library of Alexandria. A ring of microphones built into can-shaped Echo speakers enable the devices to identify voices even when music is playing, according to Amazon.