If you ask someone a question, that person needs to know the answer before they can give it to you. This is the same concept applied to digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, where it can only answer questions that it already knows the answer to, which for the most part is built-in thanks to Amazon’s efforts.However since Alexa can’t possibly know every single thing, this is an area Amazon is trying to improve by crowdsourcing that information by launching a program called Alexa Answers. According to Amazon, “Beginning today, via invitation-only, customers can add answers and information to Alexa through a new feature we call Alexa Answers. Those who receive an invite via email can start contributing answers to Alexa today.”
In a way this is similar to how Amazon’s shopping platform works, where customers who are interested in a product can submit questions about that product which can then be answered by another customer. This will help Amazon and companies save time, assuming that the answers provided are accurate.
Presumably Amazon will verify the answers that are provided to the questions, since we imagine how bad it will look for them if Alexa were to start providing users with the wrong answers. There is no word on how one can secure themselves an invite to start answering questions, or how many customers will be selected to participate.