Evi (software)
Evi (formerly True Knowledge) is a technology company in Cambridge, England, founded by William Tunstall-Pedoe, which specialises in knowledge base and semantic search engine software. Its first product was an answer engine that aimed to directly answer questions posed in plain English text, which is accomplished using a database of discrete facts. The True Knowledge Answer engine was launched for private beta testing and development on 7 November 2007.
In January 2012 True Knowledge launched a major new product Evi (pronounced ee-vee), an artificial intelligence program which can be communicated with using natural language via an app on iPhone and Android.
The company changed its name from True Knowledge to Evi in June 2012.
In October 2012, Evi was acquired by Amazon and is now part of the Amazon group of companies.
Core technology premise
The True Knowledge Answer Engine attempts to comprehend posed questions by disambiguating from all possible meanings of the words in the question to find the most likely meaning of the question being asked. It does this by drawing upon its database of knowledge of discrete facts. As these facts are stored in a form that the computer can understand, the answer engine attempts to produce an answer to what it comprehends to be the question by logically deducing from them.