Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13072813

I'm not sure what the benefit of this is over the alexa voice service api:

https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-vo...

Does anyone know how this differs from alexa voice services? Does this allow you to get away from the stilted "example phrases" of the alexa api and just get a transcript? Judging from the inclusion of "intents" on the faq, it looks like the "example phrase" interface will still be required:

https://aws.amazon.com/lex/faqs/

You need intents so whatever code is running Lex knows to do something. Especially for a conversation string.

If you want text to speech or text to text? You'd make a polly utility, or do something like "open dictate" and then just capture everything said after.

That being said the duration is limited too.

Pricing: https://aws.amazon.com/lex/pricing/

>$0.004 per voice request, and $.00075 per text request.

I don't know what else to compare this to.

I see how they went from Alexa to Lex, but does anybody else think the only time they've ever heard of Lex is Lex Luther? Is it a great idea to name a product aimed at developers which is boardering in the AI space after Superman's nemesis?

I'm not going to forget it as a name. Thoughts?

I'm thinking it's a play on A(lex)a andlexical analysis[1]. That may be where Alexa got her name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_analysis

I assumed it was specifically from 'a lexer', an homonym.

"does anybody else think the only time they've ever heard of Lex is Lex Luther"

TBH, Lex Luthor is probably a better association than the spaceship Lexx. At least he doesn't make every household item into a not-even-disguised dick joke. :)

I'm waiting for Amazon Yak, for all your shaving needs. Or maybe yacc. For your syntax tree parsing needs.

Seriously though, Lex is an old school tokenizer for parsing problems.

Lex who?

My only connotation for "Lex" is 'lexical analysis' and derived terms ('to lex', 'a lexeme', 'a lexer').

Superman's archenemy.

Lex Luther would be a killer name for a support library.

Does it handle only English?

Yes, only US English. It's quite unfortunate that the most commonly spoken language on earth - Mandarin - has such poor speech recognition. Using Google Translate or Siri with Mandarin is almost useless. Hopefully people start throwing more resources towards Mandarin speech technology.

It also leaves most of Europe uncovered. I can only use Lex for demos there, no commercial services. People want to speak their own language and an English only service will always lose against a native language one. Hopefully they'll add other languages.

Did any non US English native speaker experience Amazon's language recognition? I assume it understands your language easily, but does it?

Wouldn't Baidu or other Chinese companies have an interest ? Also is Mandarin harder to recognize due to its structure ?

I won't participate and here is why... I want to delay my disintermediation and assimilation a little longer. At some point, soon, Amazon will displace commerce and the merchant class as we know it and I am not ready to let go yet.