Alexa Conference puts a focus on voice technology

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) – You probably know that Amazon’s Alexa can tell you the weather.

She can play you music.

All you have to do is ask.

Alexa is one of the voice assistants on the market that have become increasingly popular.

“I think we’ve seen a lot happen in a year, right, so usually the smart phone took about five to seven years to penetrate 40 percent of the population. This has taken like two years,” CEO Witlingo Ahmed Bouzid said.

While demand for these assistants rise, a focus turns to what more voice technology can do.

The technology is what has developers and tech experts from all over at the Alexa Conference in Chattanooga this week.

“I work with health care applications, but seeing how people use it in storytelling and in different fields give me a lot to bring back to my own work,” voice user and interface design manager Ilana Shalowitz said.

Amy Stapleton came to the conference to talk about the future of interactive storytelling.

She is the co-founder of Tellables.

They create interactive story games, like Tricky Genie.

Play it using Alexa and it will tell you a story and have you interact by asking questions.

Stapleton says voice technology now can reliably understand what people are saying, which opens the door for its use in storytelling to evolve even more.

“You know, maybe in the future, like five years from now you can tell your story to the voice assistant and it can use part of your story to either craft another story or to tell you something different,” Stapleton said.

It’s this voice technology, some say is the wave of the future.

“The generation of today will be most exclusively voice enabled technologies. That’s the next evolution of this kind of digital integration trend,” Ionia founder Matthew Cybulsky said.

As voice technology is expanding quickly, now might also be the time to look at how this technology could have negative impacts before they happen.

That’s what the Alexa Conference keynote speaker on Friday, Witlingo CEO and original head of product for Amazon’s Alexa and Connected Homes initiative Ahmed Bouzid, will be discussing.

The conference ends on Saturday.

For more information on the conference check out: https://www.alexaconference.com/