Alibaba is set to launch its voice-activated personal assistant next week, the latest Chinese tech to follow the path pioneered by Amazon’s Echo.

阿里巴巴(Alibaba)下周将推出声控个人助手，这是追随亚马逊(Amazon)的Echo所引领路线的最新一家中国高科技企业。

The Chinese ecommerce group, which has tentacles¹ into digital entertainment, payments and cloud, said it would launch the devices as early as next week. The news was first reported in The Information.

这家中国电子商务集团的触角已伸至数字娱乐、支付和云计算领域。该集团表示最早会在下周推出该设备。该新闻由《The Information》率先报道。

The move comes as Alibaba is burnishing² its credentials³ as a massive data company, harvesting information on consumers across its multiple platforms and using it to enable its merchants, advertisers ad manufacturers to better target their wares⁴.

此际，阿里巴巴正在打造其大数据公司的声望，从其多个平台获取客户信息，并用这些信息帮助商家、广告主和制造商提高针对性。

Like its peers it is also beefing up its capabilities⁵ in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Jack⁶ Ma, the former English teacher who founded Alibaba and is China’s richest man, has spoken many times of utilising technology to process the troves of data being harvested and as well as areas such as counterfeit⁷ detection.

和同类公司类似，阿里巴巴也在提高人工智能及机器学习方面的能力。阿里巴巴的创立者、中国首富、曾任英语教师的马云(Jack Ma)还多次提及，要把技术用于处理所获数据以及假货侦测等领域。

Speaking at last month’s investor⁸ presentation, he said: “We think the internet of things is the future”.

在本月的年度投资者日发表讲话时，马云表示：“我们认为物联网是未来。”

Chinese speaking personal assistants are already on the market. Baidu, which operates China’s dominant⁹ search engine, unveiled its Xiaoyu Zaijia, or little fish, AI digital assistant in January, enabling users to ask questions, seek out local restaurants and control home devices.

目前，讲中文的声控个人助手已在市场上出现。中国居统治地位的搜索引擎的运营方百度(Baidu)，曾在1月份披露其“小鱼在家”人工智能数字化助手。该设备令用户可以提出问题、寻找当地餐馆及控制家庭设备。