Amazon turns up the vocals

SAN JOSE – Amazon released a version of its Alexa speech-recognition service to let developers enable apps for voice. The Lex service comes at a time when chip vendors, including Conexant, NXP and QuickLogic, are hopeful multiple OEMs will start shipping Alexa-like devices this year with their chips.

The news marks the latest foray in a battle of cloud computing giants using machine learning to attract users. It came the same day Facebook was encouraging developers at its annual conference to use new augmented reality capabilities powered by machine learning.

Analysts say Google has an opportunity to marry its superior search service with its Google Assistant, a voice service currently only available on its Pixel smartphones and a new model from LG. Apple is a wild card here with its Siri, an early entrant in the field.

Amazon’s Lex handles speech recognition and natural language processing as a Web service. The company announced support from a handful of early preview users including a bank, an insurance company and a non-profit.

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