HackerEarth to launch virtual AI hackathon for Alexa

HackerEarth, an innovation and talent management company announced the launch of its first virtual artificial intelligence (AI) hackathon for Alexa, aimed at building more engaging skills for the cloud- based voice service and brain behind Alexa-enabled devices, including Amazon Echo.

The contest aims to encourage developers to think outside of the traditional application development approach and embrace a voice- first design approach. The participants will be given access to the Alexa Skills Kit, a set of free, self-service, public APIs, that developers can utilise to easily create new experiences for Alexa. The existing architecture allows developers to build applications or skills to enhance the customer experience for its users. The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) is a useful tool for independent developers, designers and brands to create new ways to engage Alexa.

The hackathon is being conducted keeping in mind that the resulting skills will be useful for the end users. For this reason, it is an open themed hackathon where participants can build any skill that can benefit Alexa customers. Participants are encouraged to create business productivity solutions, cool games, engaging chat bots, smart home applications or anything else that users might be looking for.

This hackathon will give participants an opportunity to work on voice- controlled skills that will make Alexa smarter.

"The AI Hackathon with HackerEarth will showcase the potential of the developer community in India to build voice skills for Alexa More than 15,000 developers from India have already started to build skills for Alexa," said Country Manager for Alexa Skills Kit, Amazon, Dilip RS.

Alexa is currently being used for myriad applications including ordering food and transportation, controlling a smart home, playing music, and much more. Popular services such as Ola, Zomato and Saavn have also identified the potential of voice-enabled customer-interactions early on and provide their services to users through Alexa and Echo devices.

The registration process of this hackathon will conclude on April 1. All teams that qualify will be required to submit a working skill based on their idea by April 15. All skill submissions that pass the skills qualification process by April 21 will get published to the India skill store and will be readily available for users to install on their Alexa app. Teams can also add other language support to make their skills available to the global skill stores. However participants must register themselves as India vendors and publish their skills to the India store to qualify for the competition.

The name of winning team will be announced on May 1. The winning teams will also be awarded cash prizes, devices including Amazon Echo and Amazon Kindle and will also get to meet senior team members from Alexa Skills team in India.