CASE IN POINT

Turning Words Into Actions

By Colleen Donnelly

An estimated 3.25 billion people—nearly half of the world’s population—currently own a smart speaker. These Wi-Fi-enabled speakers use a built-in voice assistant like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s 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’s complex technology at work. Let’s 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

     1. ACTIVATION

The voice assistant knows that a command is coming when it hears the word “Alexa”, its designated wake word.

an illustration depicts Alexa thinking over a query

2. QUERY
The user asks a question or makes a request—in 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. “Currently, in Villanova, Pennsylvania, it’s 65 degrees Fahrenheit with clear skies and sun.”

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