How the Amazon Echo learned to talk — and listen

A photo of a black speaker, the Amazon Echo, on a gray background. | Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Jeff Bezos badly wanted a voice computer. He had been saying so publicly since the very early days of Amazon, telling anyone who would listen about why voice might make it easier and more natural to interact with technology. (And to buy stuff from Jeff Bezos.) But when a team at Amazon set out to actually make the voice computer a reality, they encountered a seemingly endless series o