Popular messaging app Line has revealed that it’s working on its very own digital assistant, something not unlike Amazon’s Alexa. The company is going to call its assistant Clova. It hasn’t provided a lot of details about the virtual assistant at this point in time but does say that it wants the AI-powered assistant to work in its apps and hardware made by other companies. Line promises that Clova will be able to do anything and everything that you’d expect from a virtual assistant.
This includes basic features like the ability to read the news, check the weather, order products, stream music, update calendar appointments, and more. Line says that Cova is also going to have some advanced features which will include facial recognition as well as the ability to respond to “complicated questions.”
The company hasn’t shown off any of these capabilities just yet so it’s unclear if it’s going to perform as well as Line suggests it would. The company says that it’s going to demo Clova “in early summer.”
Clova will first find a place in a dedicated app of the same name as well as a smart speaker similar to the Amazon Echo called Wave. The assistant will initially be limited to Line’s products but the company is reportedly in talks with companies like LG and Sony to get them to build the assistant inside their devices. Whether or not they decided to do so is another matter entirely.