Amazon Unveils Novel Alexa Dialog Modeling for Natural, Cross-Skill Conversations : Alexa Blogs

Today, customer exchanges with Alexa are generally either one-shot requests, like "Alexa, what's the weather?", or interactions that require multiple requests to complete more complex tasks. An Alexa customer planning a family movie night out, for example, must interact independently with multiple skills to find a list of local theaters playing a particular movie, identify a restaurant near one of them, and then purchase movie tickets, book a table, and perhaps order a ride. The cognitive burden of carrying information across skills -- such as time, number of people, and location -- rests with the customer. "We envision a world where customers will converse more naturally with Alexa: seamlessly transitioning between skills, asking questions, making choices, and speaking the same way they would with a friend, family member, or co-worker," says Rohit Prasad, Alexa vice president and head scientist. "Our objective is to shift the cognitive burden from the customer to Alexa."