An Open-Source (and Cute) Alternative to Amazon Echo

Mark 1 is no Amazon Echo: it looks like an '80s clock radio mashed up with WALL-E, and speaks with a robotic, bass-heavy British accent. But the startup behind it, Mycroft, hopes it has similar appeal to hackers, students, and companies who want a voice-enabled assistant that they can run on all kinds of devices and alter at will. When it comes to voice-enabled digital assistants, there are plenty of them available these days--in addition to the Echo, which runs Amazon's Alexa assistant, there's Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's assistant. None of these is open-source, though, so even if developers can use it on various devices (like Amazon's Alexa), they can't go under the hood and change its code--ostensibly, to help improve it. Mycroft--whose voice assistant, which runs on Mark 1, is also called Mycroft--isn't trying to rival any of these big companies' digital helpers, says CEO Joshua Montgomery.