Evi (software)
| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
|
Type of site
|
Answer Engine |
| Available in | English |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, England |
| Founder(s) | William Tunstall-Pedoe |
| Industry | Internet |
| Products | Evi, Amazon Alexa |
| Parent | Amazon.com, Inc. |
| Website | evi |
| Registration | Yes |
| Launched | 7 November 2007 |
| Current status | Beta |
Evi (formerly True Knowledge) is a technology company in Cambridge, England, founded by William Tunstall-Pedoe, which specialises in knowledge base and semantic search engine software. Its first product was an answer engine that aimed to directly answer questions on any subject posed in plain English text, which is accomplished using a database of discrete facts. The True Knowledge Answer engine was launched for private beta testing and development on 7 November 2007.
In January 2012 True Knowledge launched a major new product Evi (pronounced ee-vee), an artificial intelligence program which can be communicated with using natural language via an app on iPhone and Android.
The company changed its name from True Knowledge to Evi in June 2012.
In October 2012, Evi was acquired by Amazon and is now part of the Amazon group of companies. The technology and team became a key part of Amazon Alexa assistant (debuting with the Amazon Echo).
The True Knowledge Answer Engine attempts to comprehend posed questions by disambiguating from all possible meanings of the words in the question to find the most likely meaning of the question being asked. It does this by drawing upon its database of knowledge of discrete facts. As these facts are stored in a form that the computer can understand, the answer engine attempts to produce an answer to what it comprehends to be the question by logically deducing from them.
For example, if one were to type in "What is the birth date of George W. Bush?", True Knowledge would reason from the facts "George W. Bush is a president", "George W. Bush is a human being", "A president is a subclass of human being", "Date of creation is a more general form for birth date", and "the 6th of July is the date of creation for George W. Bush", to produce the simple answer, "the 6th of July". True Knowledge differs from competitors like Freebase and DBpedia in that they offer natural language access. Unlike the others however, users who post information to True Knowledge granted the company a "non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual licence to use such information to operate this website and for any other purposes".
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Wikipedia