Alexa

National Australia Bank now has a “brand voice”, a unique, lifelike sounding automated speech capability for its contact centres powered by cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services. The NAB voice, which can read out text in a natural way, sounds like a male Australian which, the bank says, is consistent

The number of voice assistants used to access smart home devices will reach 555 million by 2024; up from 105 million in 2019, according to new data from Juniper Research. By 2024, Juniper Research expects more than 90 per cent of voice assistants to be used to control smart home

I generally hate blog posts and articles that suggest there is a single trick, hack or tip that can change your world. (I swear if I see one more headline promising the one habit that can turn me into Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffet, my head will explode.) But, there

There will be 8 billion digital voice assistants in use by 2023, up from an estimated 2.5 billion at the end of 2018, according to a new report from Juniper Research. While smartphone assistants will be the largest platform by volume thanks to Google Assistant and Siri, Juniper’s new research

When Amazon launched its Alexa virtual assistant in 2014, it probably didn’t think that a bird would expose a potentially significant legal issue with the device. But an African grey parrot named Rocco, living in Blewbury, England, appears to have done just that. Last month, Rocco made headlines for his

The adoption of voice assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant will be a key factor behind smart home growth, with 275 million voice assistant devices used to control smart homes by 2023. This is up from an estimated 25 million in 2018, a growth of 1,000 per cent. The

FMCG brands need to rethink the fundamentals of marketing to survive in a world of voice-based shopping. That’s the view of  Vanessa Matthijssen, Deloitte Australia’s National Consumer Products Sector Lead and author of a new paper  ‘Meaningful brands – connecting with the consumer in the new world’. “Brands must shift

The rise of empowered customers that is impacting not just retail but most other industries, isn’t going to slow down any time soon. That’s the view of Jeff Bezos, who used used his annual letter to shareholders to highlight the company’s performance in 2017 and share how Amazon stays ahead

“When are you going to launch Prime?” That’s the number one request Amazon has gotten from customers since it launched in Australia five months ago. And the answer — according to Russ Grandinetti Amazon SVP, International Consumer — is soon. “I don’t have any news to report about Prime other

We’re all used to targeted advertisements on the internet. But the introduction of voice assistants like Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant mean that companies are capturing all new kinds of data on us, and could build much more detailed “behaviour profiles” with which to target us. There is already a