Calling itself one of the last independent AI-powered assistants, the Ozlo personal assistant was made publicly available for the first time today on iOS and the web.
Ozlo will expand to become a voice-enabled Amazon Alexa skill, and it will soon be available on bot platforms like Facebook Messenger as well, CEO Charles Jolley told VentureBeat in a phone interview.
An Ozlo private beta started in May with a focus on finding people restaurants, bars, and recipes. The bot now draws on intelligence from sources like TripAdvisor, Yelp, DoorDash, and food and dietary specialists, and can tell you about news, weather, businesses, and PokéStops.
Ozlo becomes publicly available shortly after a series of significant moves by tech giants to acquire AI-powered assistants.
Prior to the release of the new chat app Allo three weeks ago, Google acquired API.ai, a bot creation platform whose intelligent assistant dates back to 2011.
With Allo came Google Assistant. Last week with the arrival of lots of new Google hardware, Google Assistant took center stage, and CEO Sundar Pichai made his case for why it should be your guide in the age of artificial intelligence.
A day later, Samsung announced that it acquired the highly anticipated intelligent assistant Viv, made by the creators of Siri.
In the midst of these high-profile acquisitions, Ozlo is making its independence part of its business strategy.
"There's been a lot of consolidation and changes happening with Allo and these companies being bought so the industry is really shaping up now," Jolley said. "I think we'd like to be independent. I think there's a big opportunity here for an independent company to give people the best answer."
