Meet Rohit, Mastermind Behind Amazon's Alexa

    • Ritika Kumar
    • Publish Date: Nov 22 2019 6:00PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Nov 26 2019 4:20PM
Meet Rohit, Mastermind Behind Amazon's Alexa

Who could have imagined that talking to a device and controlling it through just your voice would become a reality? But technology is made of stories which make impossible turn on its head.

And Rohit Prasad, an Indian-origin Amazon engineer, made it happen with his game changing Amazon's Alexa, a voice-based AI. His journey is about persistance, diligence and some magic.  

Before spinning his magic wand at Amazon with Alexa, Rohit did his engineering from Birla Institute Of Technology, Ranchi. Rohit still has a home in Ranchi, where he visits every one-and-a-half years, he tells Times Of India. 

Rohit then moved to the US for higher studies -- earning an MS in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. This is where Prasad did some cutting-edge research on low-bit rate speech coding for wireless applications, where his interest in speech recognition began.

Star Trek inspired Alexa's creation

"We grew up in the Star Trek era, that was the inspiration for us," Rohit Prasad told Times Of India. Captain Kirk and the crew giving voice commands, like "Give me warp speed" instead of pressing any buttons or navigating a complicated menu. Touch seemed inefficient, speech was just so much more convenient.

After moving to Amazon in 2013, Rohit was given the task to bring the ability to interact with human voice on Amazon products and devices. Two years ago he was made the head scientists of Alexa artificial intelligence.

Even though Rohit had the right skill sets for the job, it was still a long journey towards giving birth to Alexa.

Building Alexa, a voice AI

Rohit says that cracking Alexa's voice secrets involved four major steps. One, the Alexa system must be able recognise speech. Secondly, it should then make sense of what's being said -- what is also called as natural language processing.

Thirdly, it should then be able to understand specific commands and have the resources to act on them. Fourthly, and most importantly, these speech detection and processing capabilities have to improve every day to understand user context better. And if you get to try Alexa, she's definitely one of the best -- if not the best Voice AI out there. Google Home gives Amazon Echo a stiff competition, but by some estimates Amazon controls the voice input devices market by a whopping 76%.

What's keeping Rohit busy these days?

Next on Rohit Prasad's list of to-dos is a particularly Indian problem. The Hindi word "achcha" sounds freakishly similar to "alexa", waking up Amazon Echo devices in households, something that Prasad is aware of and is working to fix. "We have taken steps to make Alexa sensitive to the difference," says Rohit Prasad.

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Comments

Navneet Kishan.S NAGARJUNA VIDYANIKETAN

Very grateful to such a brilliant engineer for getting a revolutionary Artificial intelligence program that can change the way we live by making our lives easier. Eagerly looking forward for development in Alexa for making it sensitive and clearer in speech recieving. We must get inspired from engineers like Mr. Rohit to always invent something new!

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