In the near future, voice-controlled assistance will be ubiquitous. Cars, homes, subway stations, etc. will all have some type of ambient microphone-speaker device which listens and responds to commands. Already we see commercial products emerging such as Apple's "Siri", Microsoft's "Cortana", and Amazon's "Echo" that carry out such functions. But those all limit you to what the companies' developers decide you can do. This is because the companies have to hire developers to program every type of input and every type of response. Moreover, the voice assistance that they provide only work on proprietary products that they sell.
Hey Athena solves both of these problems by offering a cross-platform solution that is 100% free and open-source. This means Hey Athena will be able to work on a multitude of platforms and devices. Furthermore, by open-sourcing the software, Hey Athena empowers developers & users all around the world to make their own contributions. Take a look at Android. Android is currently the largest smartphone platform in the world. This is because it offers an open-source alternative to proprietary products such as iOS. Companies such as Samsung and HTC then adopt this free platform and make further contributions to fit their needs. They do this because it is cheap and easy. It saves them the cost of having to hire a huge team of developers. Similarly, companies will be able to adopt Hey Athena software for their products, and contribute to its development. To be clear though: Hey Athena enables anyone with basic programming knowledge to add their own contributions to the software. By following this unique business plan, Hey Athena will become the voice assistant platform of the future.
