IBM Watson

IBM is today launching Watson Assistant, a new service

aimed at companies looking to build voice-activated

virtual assistants for their own products. Want your hotel’s

rooms to remember a guest’s preferences for air-con? Or

your car’s dashboard to be controllable via voice interface?

IBM’s message to companies is: we can help you build that.

It’s an interesting pitch, especially as voice assistants like

Amazon’s Alexa are being integrated into new arenas.

(See, for example, the Wynn Las Vegas’s decision to install

Echoes in every room.) IBM says this shows the popularity

of conversational interfaces, and believes companies should

choose Watson Assistant over Alexa or Siri for a number of

reasons — namely: branding, personalization, and privacy.

First, Watson Assistant is a white label product. There’s no

Watson animated globe, or “OK Watson” wake-word —

companies can add their own flair rather than ceding

territory to Amazon or Apple. Second, clients can train their

assistants using their own datasets, and IBM says it’s easier

to add relevant actions and commands than with other

assistant tech. And third, each integration of Watson Assistant

keep its data to itself, meaning big tech companies aren’t

pooling information on users’ activities across multiple domains.

“If you start running the entire world through Alexa it’s an

enormous amount of data and control to give to one company,”

IBM’s vice president of Watson IoT, Bret Greenstein, tells The

Verge. Looking at this week’s Cambridge Analytica and Facebook

scandal, it’s easy to see the benefits of keeping data out of the

hands of powerful intermediaries.

IBM has already secured a couple of small partnerships for

Watson Assistant. One with Harman, building a voice assistant

for a Maserati concept car; another at Munich airport, where

Watson Assistant is powering a Pepper robot that offers visitors

directions; and a third with smart home company Chameleon

Technologies, where the voice tech powers its smart home meter.