This may be a breakthrough year for voice control of every home appliance
San Francisco/Portland — For years, the biggest names in tech crammed the Consumer Electronics Show floor with fridges, light switches and microwave ovens to preview a futuristic world where you could control every appliance in the home with your voice. But most of these products, bogged down by glitchy software and hard-to-navigate interfaces, failed to go mainstream. This year may be different. Aided by new artificial intelligence software that makes it easier for gadgets to understand speech, tech giants led by Amazon.com are locked in a race for dominance of digital home assistants. "People are a bit disappointed with assistants, because there are no clear use cases," said Greg Gerard, creative chairman of Holi, which is debuting a $199 smart alarm clock called Bonjour. "We have one." Gerard must show regular consumers the value of smart assistant technology. But he doesn’t need to convince big technology firms, which all believe voice-based interactions with devices will explod...
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