Recently, Amazon announced layoffs in their Alexa business, but this was only related to the devices division. It also is used to help train the AI and machine learning engines to make them more accurate. Apple, like Amazon, Google, and many others, leverages voice requests to help them build richer databases for many aspects of their businesses.įor one, it helps them garner detailed information on their customers' interests and desires and then uses that to provide targeted information, services, and ads. In the Time Magazine article, I said that Siri would become a powerful search engine in its own right, and it has. This data is used by their AI and machine learning technology to build enormous databases about public interests, needs, focus, politics, or anything that these voice engines can cull from voice requests and questions. The public face of voice recognition is clear, but the underlying reason is that it provides the companies behind them with a vast amount of data. It started building its own knowledge database that was tied to an already impressive database Apple had.'

As people have used Siri, it has gathered all types of data points. 'When Apple introduced its version of Siri, I wrote that it would become the underlying data gathering engine for Apple and could even become a threat to Google's dominance in search. In a piece I did on Apple's Siri for Time Magazine in 2016, when Siri was given more features, I stated the following. While we as consumers understand its face value as a UI, the companies' real thrust behind these investments is vital to their businesses and future.

Mac voice recognition