Samsung Mobile Executive Vice President Won Choi announced how the company will focus on improving the voice assistant’s features.

The executive vice president did not reveal details on how Samsung will integrate genAI to the voice assistant. He emphasizes that by adding AI, conversations will be more natural, and the company will work diligently on realizing the mission to build AI into the voice assistant.

There is information that the company is focusing on building features into Bixby that are similar to ChatGPT. According to Samsung, this will improve the voice assistant’s ability to respond naturally.

The voice assistant will also be able to summarize articles, documents as well as make suggestions for different places.

The president of the mobile division at the company says that Samsung will allow AI features on its devices to be free by 2025.

The Alexa division will undergo a restructuring that will result in job cuts. The move is part of Amazon’s strategy to streamline operations and focus on key growth areas. Although no specific details on the number of cuts have been revealed, it is understood that they will affect a significant portion of the workforce.

In addition to this, the cloud gaming division will also make cuts. That division, focused on cloud gaming services, has faced challenges competing with industry giants like Google and Microsoft. The layoffs indicate a reassessment of Amazon’s approach to the cloud gaming market and a reallocation of resources to other initiatives.

These developments are further evidence of Amazon adapting to changing market dynamics and prioritizing areas with the greatest growth potential. With its latest actions, the company aims to better position itself in the highly competitive technology industry.

While layoffs can be troubling for employees, they can also have their upside. The layoffs signal the company’s efforts to optimize its resources and align its workforce with its strategic goals.

Amazon is expected to make further adjustments to its organizational structure and initiatives.

The FTC reached a settlement with the company that includes enhanced protections for child gamers. Additionally, the tech giant was found to have failed to inform parents of its data collection policies.

Will misuse of personal data and breach of privacy become a new trend? Just a few days ago, the same US commission fined Amazon $25 million for violating children’s privacy with its voice assistant Alexa.

The FTC said Microsoft violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by failing to obtain proper parental consent and retaining personal data of children under 13 for longer than unreasonable.
for accounts created before 2021.

The law requires online services and websites targeting children to obtain parental consent and inform them of the personal data being collected about their child.

To access certain services Xbox users must create an account, with information such as full name, email address and date of birth collected.

Only after obtaining personal information, such as the child’s phone number, does Microsoft ask the parent for permission.

“Regrettably, we did not meet customer expectations and are committed to complying with the order to continue improving upon our safety measures,”

Microsoft’s Dave McCarthy, CVP of Xbox Player Services, wrote in an Xbox blog post.

As part of the settlement, Microsoft must also institute new safety protections for children. That includes maintaining a system to delete all personal data after two weeks if no parental consent is obtained.

This week, the company discussed at its annual Alexa Live developer summit features and tools to make Alexa a component in everything from smartphones and cars to smart speakers and household appliances. Enhancements to the platform included a better understanding of natural language to deliver services.

The company also announced that its Alexa-enabled Echo devices would support the Matter interoperability protocol used by smart home device manufacturers. To give hardware makers more options, the company introduced a toolkit for making devices with multiple assistants to let consumers decide which to use.

Amazon’s Alexa advancements aim to ride consumer and business adoption of voice assistants. It is said that by 2025, one in two knowledge workers will use virtual assistants daily, compared with 2% in 2019.

A 2018 Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey found that 90% of consumers were familiar with voice-enabled devices. Also, more than 70% preferred to use their voice to search for products, services or anything else online instead of physically typing.

Voice industry professionals globally see Amazon Alexa as the leading voice assistant development platform, according to a survey by Voicebot.ai. The research and news organization found Google Assistant was second, with Apple Siri a distant third.

At Alexa Live, Amazon rolled out tools that let developers choose up to five suggested phrases to launch Alexa-powered apps, called Skills. The additional options would free users from remembering specific terms and make Alexa seem more understanding of what the user wants.

The enhancement is part of Amazon’s name-free interaction (NFI) preview available in the U.S., the U.K. and India. The NFI tool collection lets developers use common words to launch Skills.

Amazon plans to expand Alexa’s reach in smart homes through an Echo device update that will add support for Matter, a communication protocol developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance.

Amazon’s new Multi-agent Experience (MAX) toolkit provides developers with middleware components that let consumers choose the assistant on a device that should answer their query. Samsung used the technology to make its latest Family Hub smart refrigerator respond to commands over Alexa or Bixby. The latter is Samsung’s voice assistant.

MAX is the latest advancement in Amazon’s Voice Interoperability Initiative (VII), launched last year. More than 80 companies support the initiative, including Facebook, Salesforce, Verizon, and consumer device makers Sony and SONOS. Google and Apple are not VII members.

Amazon has taken Alexa to more devices by licensing a white label version. In June, auto electronics maker Continental and software developer Elektrobit introduced the first in-vehicle voice-activation system that uses Alexa to perform tasks. Possible uses include launching an audiobook, adjusting windows and mirrors, or turning the air conditioning on and off.

Amazon’s ambitions for Alexa could get derailed if the company fails to convince consumers to trust it with the amount of personal data needed for Alexa to become an intuitive assistant.

Ultimately, Amazon would use that data to sell more products and services. At the same time, it will have to be transparent on the information collected, its use and who has access to it.