Amazon's Alexa Could Soon Be In Every Marketing Meeting You Have

For anyone who's ever seen an early episode of Star Trek, recall Captain Kirk speaking to the "computer," even using that keyword to summon the computing power of the Starship Enterprise to answer a complex question requiring an expeditious answer. Ever since Gene Roddenberry introduced his sci-fi interpretation of the future, we've been chasing that dream, for as early as 1952, Bell Labs scientists introduced "Audrey," a system that recognized spoken numeric digits. Fast-forward from the days of Star Trek and Audrey, and researchers have turned the science fiction of a seamless voice interface into reality. Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's voice assistant are all manifestations of decades worth of research. Thanks to this tech confluence, today's voice systems can understand the context of an entire conversation, even the personality of whom they are conversing with.