Why just use one voice assistant when you can get Amazon’s Alexa to command Google’s Now to activate Apple’s Siri?
This voice-assistant three-way was enabled by using Amazon’s recently released Alexa voice-command system, which the company hopes will help developers insert its voice assistant (made popular in the US by Amazon’s Echo intelligent speaker) into their new products. Whether Amazon envisioned them being used to talk to competitor products, we’ll never know.
The enterprising developer Leon Nicholls used a Raspberry Pi loaded with the Amazon Alexa Skills Kit to talk to an Amazon Echo asking it to ask Google how to enable Apple’s “Hey Siri” feature on the iPhone. Alexa did as she was commanded, asking a Google Nexus 6P how to enable Hey Siri.
Google Now responded with the required instructions, part of which contained the hotword phrase Hey Siri, which in turn activated Siri on a nearby iPhone 6S.
Silly for sure, but if Apple, Google and Amazon refuse to play nicely with each other on an interconnectivity front, at least developers can get one to physically talk to the other. The possibilities could be endless. And so could their incessant nattering. The Internet of Things reaching its logical, deeply irritating conclusion.