When Products Talk

Last month, the Washington Post reported on a surprising new job in Silicon Valley: bot-writer. “Increasingly, there are poets, comedians, fiction writers, and other artistic types charged with engineering the personalities for a fast-growing crop of artificial intelligence tools,” the Post’s Elizabeth Dwoskin wrote. Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa all have personalities in need of shaping. (So, presumably, does Google Home, the competitor to the Amazon Echo announced earlier this month.) These personalities, Dwoskin reported, will soon be joined by more specialized bots developed by other companies, among them Sophie and Molly, “nurse avatars” that talk to patients about their medical conditions. There’s even a “guru avatar” in development, designed to teach meditation.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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