Announcing the Alexa Skills Challenge: Alexa Conversations Finalists!
In July at Alexa Live we announced the Alexa Skills Challenge: Alexa Conversations. The challenge invited developers to create more natural-feeling Alexa skills with fewer lines of code, and get familiar with a new AI-driven approach to dialog management designed to help create skills that customers can interact with in a natural, less constrained way.
We want to thank everyone who participated in the challenge. It’s been incredible to see you learning this new model so quickly and with such passion, sharing learnings with each other in the Slack channel, coming up with creative ideas, and bringing public APIs into great skills.
We reviewed hundreds of submissions from thousands of contestants and we’re excited to share the 10 finalists. The review process wasn’t easy; we were amazed by the range of creative implementations that handled complex, multi-turn dialogs and offered more natural-feeling customer experiences.
Here are the 10 finalists selected to move on to the next round. Congratulations to each finalist! Each finalist will take home $5,000 and continue to compete for the $20,000 grand prizes.
- A Review Session on the Great Gatsby: Review F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel through both multiple choice and free response questions. Try A Review Session on the Great Gatsby!
- Art Museum: Go to the museum. With your voice. Try Art Museum!
- date.a.voice: Lockdown is the perfect time to practice wooing a virtual partner. Go on a virtual date with a virtual assistant. Try date.a.voice!
- Job Search: Get help finding the perfect job and deliver the results to your phone. Try Job Search!
- Learning Out Loud: Build a study plan for learning at home. Try Learning Out Loud!
- Meeple Buddy: Let Alexa help you decide which tabletop game to play. Try Meeple Buddy!
- Refugee Restrooms: Find a safe nearby restroom for parents, those with accessibility needs, or trans or non-conforming genders. Try Refugee Restroom!
- Smartnest Plus: Navigate water and energy consumption reports with just your voice. Try Smartnest Plus!
- The Great Expedition: Explore the far corners of the world and find long lost artifacts, rare animals, and priceless works of art. Try The Great Expedition!
- The Conspiracy Theory Escape Room: Where does the cover up end and the conspiracy begin? Try the Conspiracy Theory Escape Room!
From October 7th through October 18th finalists have a chance to improve and re-publish their skills. Our panel of judges will then evaluate the finalists to determine the winner of the $20,000 grand prize, and evaluate additional skills for the bonus prize categories. We will announce both the grand prize winner and the bonus prize winners on October 30th.
Thank you again to everyone who participated and worked hard to submit an entry to this challenge. We really appreciate your passion and hard work. Feel free to try each of the finalist skills and see how they can accommodate the phrases you like in the order you prefer for a more natural-feeling interaction.
Visit the Alexa Developer Console to enable the Alexa Conversations beta and publish skills in the en_US locale.
- Read the Alexa Conversations Technical Documentation
- Do the Alexa Conversations Online Tutorial
- Watch the Alexa Conversations Twitch Streams
- Check Out Alexa Conversations GitHub Sample Code
- View Special Content and Community Contributions On-Demand
- Attend the Alexa Live 2020 Session Recap “Build Conversational Interfaces Faster with Alexa Conversations”
Introducing Alexa Conversations (beta)
Alexa Conversations (beta) is now available to help you create more natural-feeling Alexa skills with fewer lines of code.
Enter the Alexa Skills Challenge: Alexa Conversations
We’re thrilled to announce the Alexa Skills Challenge: Alexa Conversations with Devpost, an opportunity to invent the future of voice experiences and compete for more than $100K in prizes.
Introducing Alexa Conversations (preview)
Today we’re excited to announce Alexa Conversations (preview), a new deep learning-based approach that developers can use for creating natural voice experiences on Alexa with less effort, fewer lines of code, and less training data than before.