Amazon scientists are continuously expanding Alexa’s natural-language-understanding (NLU) capabilities to make Alexa smarter, more useful, and more engaging.Read More
Amazon Scientist Outlines Multilayer System For Smart Speaker Echo Cancellation And Voice Enhancement
Smart speakers, such as the Amazon Echo family of products, are growing in popularity among consumer and business audiences. In order to improve the automatic speech recognition (ASR) and full-duplex voice communication (FDVC) performance of these smart speakers, acoustical echo cancellation (AEC) and noise reduction systems are required. These systems reduce the noises and echoes that can impact operation, such as an Echo device accurately hearing the wake word “Alexa.”Read More
Amazon and University of Sheffield researchers make large-scale fact extraction and verification dataset publicly available
In recent years, the amount of textual information produced daily has increased exponentially. This information explosion has been accelerated by the ease with which data can be shared across the web. Most of the textual information is generated as free-form text, and only a small fraction is available in structured format (Wikidata, Freebase etc.) that can be processed and analyzed directly by machines.Read More
Making Alexa more friction-free
This morning, I am delivering a keynote talk at the World Wide Web Conference in Lyon, France, with the title, Conversational AI for Interacting with the Digital and Physical World.Read More
Alexa scientists present two new techniques that improve wake word performance
The Amazon Echo is a hands-free smart home speaker you control with your voice. The first important step in enabling a delightful customer experience with an Echo or other Alexa-enabled device is wake word detection, so accurate detection of “Alexa” or substitute wake words is critical. It is challenging to build a wake word system with low error rates when there are limited computation resources on the device and it’s in the presence of background noise such as speech or music.Read More
Alexa scientists address challenges of end-pointing
Just as Alexa can wake up without the need to press a button, she also automatically detects when a user finishes her query and expects a response. This task is often called “end-of-utterance detection,” “end-of-query detection,” “end-of-turn detection,” or simply “end-pointing.”Read More