The Telegraph My details My newsletters Logout Upgrade to Premium My details My newsletters Logout The Telegraph Amazon's Echo steals a march in the race for artificial intelligence 20 September 2016 • 10:24am this year Credit: Amazon It came and went so quickly that one could easily forget it ever existed, but it was only two years ago that Amazon released its own smartphone.
 Developed in the web retailer’s secretive “Lab 126”, a Silicon Valley subsidiary 800 miles south of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, the “Fire Phone” was applauded for its ideas, which included a 3D screen effect made possible by an elaborate four-camera system.
--
 A few months after the Fire Phone, Amazon unveiled a mysterious black cylinder it called the Echo.
 A two-way wireless speaker and microphone combination with a virtual artificial intelligence assistant – “Alexa” – that responds to voice commands like “Read me the news” or “Turn off the lights”, it is designed to blend into the background in a kitchen or living room, responding to every wish.
 At a glance | Amazon Echo When it was first announced to a sceptical tech press months after a flop phone, the Echo was dismissed separately as a joke and a privacy nightmare.
--
 The company’s prowess in cloud computing – which has spawned the colossal Amazon Web Services unit – means that the Echo has access to the near-infinite computing resources of the company’s servers: it can hear a question, send it to be processed, receive an answer and relay it in milliseconds.
 And Amazon’s underrated artificial intelligence chops, honed using years of it to sneak under the radar.
 It is important not to get carried away about the Echo, despite its growing buzz.
--
 But in the same way that Amazon’s tardiness in the smartphone game punished it, the company getting ahead of its competitors may prove crucial.
 Incidentally, the arms race that will follow is only likely to heighten interest in British expertise in artificial intelligence.
 Much of the Echo’s technology stems from Evi, a startup it acquired in 2012.