Amazon Alexa users will now be able to suggest answers to questions that the voice assistant couldn't answer.
Unfortunately, the level of voice assistants like Alexa, Cortana or Siri is still low. And it is not uncommon for a user to receive a frankly obscure answer to his request. But we ourselves can begin to teach our creations. At the very least, Amazon Alexa users now have access to a crowdsourced platform through which they can provide answers to some questions that were too difficult for the assistant.
To do this, users must log into the Alexa Answers website using Amazon account, where they will be presented with a list of questions that Alexa was unable to answer. The list of questions can be sorted by date added or by specific topics.
Also, platform users will be able to mark inappropriate or incorrect answers, highlight especially successful ones (a similar approach is used in Google Translate). They will also have public statistics showing how many responses they provided, how those responses were scored, and how many times they were submitted to Alexa.
The new feature caused some doubts among many users. But Amazon assures that filters will be used to prevent swear words, offensive language, or “slippery” topics from appearing. Ready-made answers will be monitored by human editors and special algorithms. However, using a ready-made answer, Alexa will add, just in case, that it was suggested to her by users (“according to an Amazon customer”).
