The British Broadcasting Corporation have announced plans to launch a digital assistant, similar to the Alexa.
It will not be a physical device, but a solution designed to work in existing smart tech, such as phones and televisions.
To activate simply say, “beeb”, although this is only a working title admitted BBC spokespersons.
BBC staff from all across the UK are being invited into the recording studio to help speed up the learning curve for different accents, which Alexa still has quite some struggle with in certain scenarios.
Baidu a Chinese technology firm and Amazon owned a combined 43% share of global smart speaker market in the first quarter of 2019.
The word choice “Beeb” has also raised concerns, most start audio devices use words which have multiple syllables so as to reduce the chance of the device to pick up on random sentences, imagine talking about Justin “Beeb”er, then your device wakes up.
The BBC have said that having their own system will allow them to, “experiment with new programmes, features and experiences without someone else’s permission to build it in a certain way.
“Much like we did with BBC iPlayer, we want to make sure everyone can benefit from this new technology, and bring people exciting new content, programmes and services in a trusted, easy-to-use way,
“This marks another step in ensuring public service values can be protected in a voice-enabled future.”
