Amazon has announced the Alexa Prize, a $2.5 million award for college students who develop technology to make it more natural to talk with company’s Alexa virtual assistant. Amazon said it hopes to build a socialbot on Alexa which is capable of conversing with people about popular topics and news events. VentureBeat adds: Up to ten teams will be sponsored by Amazon and receive a $100,000 stipend, Alexa-enabled devices, free AWS services, and support from the Alexa team. […] The first contest will be held at AWS re:invent in November 2017. Among other bot-building contests, the Watson Group at IBM has prizes and cash for anyone who can make bots that talk to each other.

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon Launches .5 Million Alexa Prize For College Students Building Bots