Amazon Alexa

Amazon Alexa is a voice-based chatbot that is the brains behind the Echo family of products from Amazon. Users can customize their Echo experience by adding skills to their Alexa account in a similar way to how you add apps onto a smartphone. These skills can be downloaded from the Alexa Skills Store and there are thousands to choose from.

Similar to apps, each of these skills has been designed to perform a single task, whether that's to talk you through a recipe to cook, guide you through your morning workout, or just to tell you jokes.

Alexa was released in November 2014 and has become increasingly popular. By the end of 2017, Amazon had sold tens of millions of Alexa-connected devices. This has resulted in Alexa devices securing 55% of the market for virtual assistants by February 2018.