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CASE IN POINT

Turning Words Into Actions

By Colleen Donnelly

An estimated 3.25 billion people鈥攏early half of the world鈥檚 population鈥攃urrently own a smart speaker. These Wi-Fi-enabled speakers use a built-in voice assistant like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple鈥檚 Siri or Microsoft鈥檚 Cortana to perform everyday tasks in response to voice commands.

The US is the largest consumer of smart speakers globally. These voice-activated devices have become a part of everyday life in many American households, with nearly 75 percent of owners using smart speakers daily. Their most frequent tasks? Users of all ages have come to rely on smart speakers to listen to music, search for real-time information like the weather forecast, and provide almost instantaneous answers to factual questions.

Using a voice assistant is so simple that it can be easy to forget there鈥檚 complex technology at work. Let鈥檚 take a closer look at the inner workings of this common household gadget to understand how it turns your voice commands into actions.

an illustration depicts Alexa being activated with the wake word "Alexa"
ILLUSTRATION: MIKEY BURTON

聽聽聽聽 1. ACTIVATION

The voice assistant knows that a command is coming when it hears the word 鈥淎lexa鈥, its designated wake word.

an illustration depicts Alexa thinking over a query

2. QUERY
The user asks a question or makes a request鈥攊n this case, retrieving the local weather forecast for a specified location.

an illustration depicts Alexa using speech recognition software

3. AUTOMATIC SPEECH RECOGNITION
Trained to filter out background noise, the virtual assistant uses speech recognition software to translate spoken words to text.

an illustration depicts natural language processing

4. NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
Next, the natural language processing component analyzes this text to understand the context and intent of your voice command.

an illustration depicts 8 of Alexa's skills

5. MAPPING THE TASK
Alexa maps this request to one of more than 100,000 skills the virtual assistant is capable of performing. In this case, it activates Alexa Weather Skills.

an illustration depicts Alexa connecting to the cloud

6. CONNECTING TO THE CLOUD
Alexa uses wireless connectivity to connect to the internet and obtain data about the latest weather forecast from AccuWeather for the requested location.

an illustrated Alexa reports that it is 65 degrees

7. EXECUTING THE TASK
Alexa reports the weather forecast. 鈥淐urrently, in 棉花糖直播, Pennsylvania, it鈥檚 65 degrees Fahrenheit with clear skies and sun.鈥

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Alexa, How Do Your Work?

棉花糖直播 experts shed light on the inner workings of voice assistant technology and how it has evolved