The Asian kid somehow always catches up.
Alexa is the go-to AI assistant. She predicts the weather conditions for the day as we rush out the door, plays the best music for us after work, and even helps to control the other electronic appliances in the house. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and Alexa pretty much sums up that saying for us.
Unfortunately, Alexa is mostly unavailable in Asia. Even if we manage to get our hands on Amazon’s Echo, our household appliances might not be able to sync Alexa due to compatibility issues.
Good news for Asia
However, LINE is about to change all of that. The Japanese company, LINE is working with South Korean tech giants, LG and Sony to launch the Asian version of Alexa. The name is “Clova”.
A little more about LINE. LINE is a subsidiary company of Naver, South Korea’s largest internet search engine. LINE is notable for their messenger app and internet services.
Announced at the MWC, this partnership is named “Project J”.
This is truly a collaboration from the giants of the east — LINE has been working closely with its parent company, Naver, the most popular search engine in Korea.
Hence, Clova will include its parent company, Naver’s new digital assistant, AMICA. This would mean that Clova would be more than just a mere speaker with intuitive functions Google Assistant or Siri has.
LINE has been focusing the majority of their efforts in creating their form of “artificial intelligence” to mimic the success of Alexa. LINE’s CEO Takeshi Idezawa said that this shift to delve into AI parallels the “paradigm shift as dramatic as the rise of the smartphone a decade ago”.
Clova and her ambitions
Clova will be an AI virtual assistant based on cloud-based services for a range of different products, which includes consumer gadgets and smart home appliances.
The Clova cloud platform will integrate all of LINE’s existing services and move beyond just users’ “post-touch [and] post display”.
A key differentiating factor of Clova from the previous AI platforms lies in the customised nature of its services. It will hence, be based on the user’s culture and geography. After all, it is taking a regional approach instead of trying to compete in the global landscape, which Siri and Google Assistant already dominates.
For now, Clova is expected to be built into Wave, a smart speaker that is set to hit Japan and Korea early second part of this year. Wave is said to be the “centerpiece for how people will interact with their virtual assistant.”
Some have reported that there’s a possibility of Clova being incorporated into smart-ear devices. As a pioneer in the industry, Sony would be a likely partner.
With such technology, it would mean that consumers can now listen to directions without the need to look at their smartphones at all. This could bring AI to a whole new level.
We wonder what’s the back story behind the name Clova, though.
