Skip to Content
Artificial intelligence

IBM will help any firm build its own voice assistant

The firm’s Watson AI is being wheeled out (again) to imbue any firm’s device with abilities like those of Siri or Alexa—but it’s unclear if that’s really a good idea for users.

The news:  Engadget reports that IBM is launching a kind of white-label software service that will let other companies build voice control into anything from a smart speaker in a hotel room to the dashboard of a Maserati. The assistant will allow users to chat via typed text in some situations, too.

Why it’s interesting: The offer, really, is to allow firms to break free from making apps that run on voice software built by Google and Amazon. Companies will like being able to use their own training data, inject their own brand experience, and keep utterances away from the ears of another firm.

But: It’s not clear that a surfeit of smart assistants is such a good idea for users. Dealing with multiple AI bots on a day-to-day basis could become annoying. And if every firm is building its own assistants without the resources of, say, Amazon, they could end up being rather less good than Alexa.

Deep Dive

Artificial intelligence

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario–like games from scratch

Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.