It is not new that AI-powered devices are growing in their demand, and they continuously surround us. But they are also getting more intelligent due to the power of Machine Learning. Amazon’s Alexa is one of the most famous AI-powered voice assistants, and it seems that the device is getting a new feature that will further improve its performance.

The new feature lets Alexa figure out the meaning of requests it has never heard before. The quality goes by the name of interactive learning and will help the assistant learn from everyday conversations. Deep-learning models power interactive teaching, and it works by having Alexa ask questions about a task-relevant phrase it is encountering for the first time.

With the new feature, Alexa can recognize gaps in its understanding and initiate the learning process. For now, Amazon is the only company to have a system that can elicit more information on words or terms it doesn’t know. Having interactive learning capability can help make the systems, ranging from smart speakers or AI call center agents, more robust.

“This is a reasonably significant advance in the capability of conversational systems. It is not a seismic leap, but it is advancing state of the art and moving conversational systems towards a more natural conversational style.”

Though the new feature is groundbreaking, it has its current limitations. The unique ability only has a limited scope of learning. For now, interactive teaching will only be available for tasks related to lights and climate-control devices, Amazon said but will expand over time.

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