Big Mouth Billy Bass Fuses Consumer Tech and AI

In Dec. 2018, Amazon launched its Big Mouth Billy Bass with Alexa compatibility. Sure, it sounds like a goofy premise, especially when juxtaposed with Stanley Kubrick's sprawling vision in his genre-defining sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey." Still, the Alexa Big Mouth Billy Bass touts (or trouts?) a nifty set of skills which posit it as a hybrid of smart home and consumer tech. Back in 2016, developer Brian Kane hacked a Big Mouth Billy Bass and, with Alexa's API, added artificial intelligence (AI) support via Alexa. Now, an official version from Gemmy Industries offers an Alexa-enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass. Unlike the majority of smart assistants such as Amazon Echo devices or Google Assistant speakers, the Big Mouth Billy Bass comes in a decidedly non-smart home form factor.