The BBC has announced plans to launch its own rival to Alexa next year.
The digital voice assistant will not be a hardware device, but is being designed to work on all smart speakers, TVs and mobile phones.
The assistant will wake when users say the word “Beeb”, although that is currently a working title, the Corporation said.
BBC staff around the UK are being invited to record their voices to help train the programme to recognise different accents.
According to a BBC spokesman, having its own assistant would enable it to “experiment with new programmes, features and experiences without someone else’s permission to build it in a certain way”.
“Much like we did with BBC iPlayer, we want to make sure everyone can benefit from this new technology, and bring people exciting new content, programmes and services – in a trusted, easy-to-use way.”
“This marks another step in ensuring public service values can be protected in a voice-enabled future.”
