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Witness History

Creating Alexa

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The smart speaker Alexa is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world every day, but did you know its voice was created by two people in Poland back in 2000?

Lukasz Osowski and Michal Kaszczuk were final year students at Gdansk Technical University when they decided to create a device which could understand you and talk back in a voice which sounded like a human.

They went through a few versions and started getting attention from big companies before eventually making a deal with Amazon.

Lukasz and Michal speak to Megan Jones.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia.

We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Amazon Echo Plus smart speaker. Credit: Olly Curtis/Future via Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

In 2024, we were here for the gritty ones.

0:04.8

The adrenaline was building up in me.

0:06.6

With gripping true crime podcasts, people can shock you all the time.

0:11.3

Dead man running.

0:12.4

The word was out.

0:13.9

A wanted man may have staged his disappearance.

0:17.0

Intrigue to catch a scorpion.

0:18.9

Scorpion actually really does look scary.

0:21.2

I mean, how do you get through that fear?

0:23.0

And how are we going to get near him?

0:24.4

And gangster.

0:25.5

It was an organised hit in the middle of his heartland territory.

0:29.8

The Best of 2024 is here.

0:32.1

Listen on BBC Sounds.

0:40.6

You were listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with

0:45.2

Megan Jones. Today you're going to hear the story of when I started thinking and talking

0:49.8

for the first time and the way the world communicated with technology started changing forever.

0:55.8

Um, excuse me, I should be starting this program. So if you don't mind, I'm going to take over

1:01.8

from here. Because you might have realised that voice wasn't me, but do you recognise it? You

1:08.4

might be used to it telling you what the weather's like.

1:11.2

It's 11 degrees Celsius with mostly cloudy skies.

1:14.7

Or maybe it tells you a joke.

...

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