This charming robot: Amazon starts hunt for a AI bot you can gossip with ZDNet

Amazon has launched a 2.5 million competition for teams of students to create an artificial intelligence charming enough that people can chat to it about celebrity gossip and sports. The'Alexa Prize' is named after the service that powers Amazon's voice-activated smart speaker, the Amazon Echo. The goal of the inaugural competition is to build a'socialbot' for Alexa that will converse with people about popular topics and news events. The team with the highest-performing socialbot will win a 500,000 prize, while there's a 1 million for the team's university if their socialbot can chat "coherently and engagingly" with humans for 20 minutes. Up to ten teams of students will also win a 100,000 award, Alexa-powered devices, free AWS services, and support from the Alexa team.