(Reuters) — China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd launched on Wednesday a cut-price voice assistant speaker, similar to Amazon.com Inc’s “Echo”, its first foray into artificially intelligent home devices.
The “Tmall Genie”, named after the company’s e-commerce platform Tmall, costs 499 yuan ($73.
42), significantly less than western counterparts by Amazon and Alphabet Inc’s Google, which range from $120 to $180.These devices are activated by voice commands to perform tasks, such as checking calendars, searching for weather reports, changing music or control smart-home devices, using internet connectivity and artificial intelligence.
China’s top tech firms have ambitions to become world leaders in artificial intelligence as companies, including Alibaba and Amazon, increasingly compete for the same markets.
Baidu, China’s top search engine, which has invested in an artificial…
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