Amazon's Alexa has become quite popular among the household for making everyone's life easier. The concept works on voice recognition amassed recognition in no time and has become hit among the consumers. But did you know Alexa, whose a phenomena across the globe has an Indian connection?
Rohit Prasad, the man from Jharkhand's Ranchi is the brain behind Amazon's Alexa.
Prasad, currently works as as Vice President and is the head Scientist of Alexa Artificial Intelligence at Amazon. Another achievement he registered under his name is that he made it to the 15th position on the Recode’s list of 100 people in technology, business and media who mattered in 2017.
Now, settled abroad, Rohit Prasad completed his schooling from DAV Public School in Ranchi. He then studied engineering from Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) Mesra, a village near the Jharkhand capital.
According to Prasad's LinkedIn profile, he joined Raytheon BBN Technologies in July 1999 as a staff scientist. In the same company, he went on to rise to the position of Deputy Manager and Senior Director of Speech, Language and Multimedia Business Unit.
Rohit Prasad joined Amazon in 2013. He worked with the e-commerce giant for three years as the Director of Machine Learning, Alexa, and was elevated in 2016 as the Vice President and Head Scientist of Alexa Artificial Intelligence.
Earlier this year, Amazon has launched Alexa for Hospitality, developed specifically to act as a virtual hotel concierge. With Amazon Echo, guests can ask Alexa for information like hotel pool hours or the location of the fitness center and request room service or housekeeping.
The device can also be used to control room lights, temperature, the blinds and the TV. Aside from the hotel experience, guests can call on Alexa for Hospitality to check airport wait times, play games, or play white noise to help them fall asleep.
Likewise, Amazon is working on a feature that will allow Amazon customers to temporarily connect to their account and play music from their personal playlist, be it Amazon Music, Spotify or Pandora, or listen to their audiobooks. Marriott International will be the first to introduce Alexa into its hotel rooms, at select properties across its portfolio including Marriott Hotels, Westin, St. Regis, Aloft and the Autograph Collection, starting this summer.
