Messaging app Line is taking a leaf out of the books of Google, Amazon and others after it launched its own artificial intelligence platform.

A voice-powered concierge service referred to as Clova — brief for “Cloud virtual Assistant” — is the center piece of the provider, just like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana. Past the assistant living within the main Line chat app, the organization said it has plans to launch hardware with assist for Clova baked-in, as Amazon and Google have completed, and workings with third parties to integrate the service into extra hardware. Sony and toy maker Tomy are many of the early partners it is talking to.

Information are pretty narrow now, however Line says that it intends for the assistant to work internal of apps and hardware, constructed both by way of itself and different corporations. It’s promising all the fundamentals — the capability to test the weather, concentrate to information, order products, update your calendar — and a few particularly advanced functions, too, like facial recognition and the potential to answer “complex questions.”

Aside from the smartphones, Clova is designed to work in third-party apps and hardware, however the first gadgets to support it’ll be a standalone Clova app, a smart speaker known as Wave and a “smart show” referred to as Face. Despite the fact that Wave looks as if an immediate knockoff of Google home, Line didn’t provide any facts approximately what units Face aside besides from its small, cartoonish face show.

An ecosystem like this has the potential for huge growth, as we’ve seen with Amazon’s Alexa. Initial use of Clova will be limited to devices built by Line and Naver, but it will then be opened up to third-party developers.

In addition to announcing the development of Clova, Line and Naver are announcing that they’ve purchased a majority stake in Vinclu, the company behind this anime-hologram-assistant-machine-thing.