Tech Roundup, Oct. 4, 2019 | Alexa in Brazil

You’re reading The Brazilian Report‘s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: Alexa in Brazil. A map of Brazilian fintechs. Pet tech—a new trend. And Brazil in the Internet Hall of Fame. 

“Alexa, can you speak Portuguese?”

Amazon Inc has just increased its position in Brazil, launching a Brazilian Portuguese version of Alexa, the company’s voice assistant app. The move comes after the opening of Amazon’s very own distribution center in January, and the arrival of Amazon Prime services to Latin America’s biggest economy.

In Brazil, Alexa will allow users to make Prime purchases with only voice commands, as well as order meals from food delivery app iFood, call an Uber, or make bank transactions using Itaú and Bradesco bank accounts. “It’s a logical move, as Alexa incentivizes users to use other Amazon services,” said Renato Franzin, a professor at the University of São Paulo’s engineering school, to 6 minutos.

The newcomer creates more competition in the voice assistant app market—Google, Apple, and Samsung already have their own such apps (Assistant, Siri, and Bixby, respectively). As we told you in our August 16 Tech Roundup, 49 percent of Brazilian smartphone owners use voice assistants—despite the feature being relatively new to Portuguese speakers. 

Why did it take so long for Amazon to launch is assistant in Brazil? Well, the company says it needed to teach its robots how to speak in a local accent—which includes the local ways to pronounce English tech words, such as wi-fi (ooh-ay-fi), or smartphone (ee-smar-tchee-pho-ney). 

As with other voice assistant apps, the Brazilian version of Alexa raises many privacy-related issues. Ricardo Garrido, the general manager for Alexa in Brazil, has confirmed that Portuguese-speaking analysts will listen to “fractions of audio clips” from users. He claims that this will happen in fewer than 1 percent of interactions. “These...