Telefonica's Answer to Apple's Siri: Aura Light Reading

Mobile World Congress 2017 -- Telef--nica has taken a bold leap into the age of artificial intelligence with its launch today of a new digital assistant called Aura, which appears to be the product of a two-year research initiative at the Spanish telco that has been a closely guarded secret. Unveiled in Barcelona on the cusp of this year's Mobile World Congress, Aura sounds and works much like Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s Siri or Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)'s Alexa, allowing customers to check on details of their Telef--nica service -- and ask for problems to be resolved or new features to be provided -- using a voice interface on a mobile device. Judging by the demonstration at Telef--nica's offices in Barcelona, Aura works at least as effectively as the digital assistants developed by the web giants but differs in one important respect: It stores and can act upon all of the information about a particular user that is relevant to his or her relationship with the operator. In fact, Telef--nica balks at the "digital assistant" label, preferring to think of Aura as a "cognitive intelligence" system than a neat bit of voice-recognition software.