The Alexa Prize

The Alexa Prize is an annual competition organized by Amazon since 2017 and designated for teams of university students from all around the globe. The goal is to create a chatbot (or a "socialbot") for Amazon Alexa that would be able to hold interesting conversations with humans about general topics like movies, sports, music etc. The grand challenge, awarded with 1 million USD, is to converse coherently and engagingly with the average length of at least 20 minutes and a 4/5 or higher rating.

 

How it works

In both years, the semifinal bots were assessed anonymously by Amazon Echo users by 5-star-rating. Two finalists were selected by this method and one by a wild card granted by Amazon to one of the semifinal teams. In the final round, Amazon chose interactors and judges to select the winner.

 

Alquist and the Alexa Prize

We have participated in both years of the competition. Our team (which was always the only non-English-speaking team in the finals) finally won the 2nd prize in both years of the competition. We also proceeded to the finals from the first semifinal place in both cases. We progressed into the finals in the third installment of the competition again. The latest results were announced in December 2018. Read more

 

Check out the official video from the finals 2018 below