Virtually Indispensable
The first to come are a dedicated Clova app and a smart speaker termed Wave.
At the end of the day, a tired boss walks home, opens the door, and rests a bunch of keys on top of the table. Immediately, a fairy-like character animatedly goes live from inside a glassy enclosure on the same table, exchanges pleasantries with him and obligingly turns on the television. The next day it wakes him up from sleep, gently advises him to refresh, get ready for office and even waves a goodbye to the master. Who in the fairy is this story and why is the character so central to the person’s routine?
A short video of Japanese messaging app Line presents its voice-powered AI assistant ‘Cloud Virtual Assistant’ alias Clova. The character in the promotional video is Gatebox, the ‘virtual robot’ of the AI service startup Vinclu, which can please the master in different ways.
Line is the latest to jump on the virtual assistant bandwagon — Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant are three others — to work from inside the apps and hardware. Line is now a major stakeholder of Vinclu.
Tech portal Verge speaks on how it promises the basics like “the ability to check the weather, listen to news, order products, update your calendar — and some surprisingly advanced features, too, like facial recognition and the ability to answer ‘complicated questions.” To see things roll out, the wait will be on till ‘early summer’. In Engadget’s words, Clova is “the next logical step” for Line’s messaging service.”
“The goal is to create a thriving ecosystem of contents, services and devices with a wide range of partners, allowing the Clova platform to continue to expand and develop over time,” Techcrunch quotes a statement from Line.
The first to come are a dedicated Clova app and a smart speaker termed Wave. There is one more in the pipeline, Clova Smart Display Face, about which nothing has been divulged for the time being. Buzz is also there that Clova would walk into headsets later on.
Beginning with first-party products, Clove has expansion plans with third parties, towards which talks are on with Sony and LG.