If it weren't for Amazon , it's entirely possible that instead of calling out to Alexa to change the music on our speakers, we might have been calling out to Evi instead. That's because the tech we know today as Amazon's smart assistant started out life with the name of Evi (pronounced ee-vee), as named by its original developer, William Tunstall-Pedoe.

The British entrepreneur and computer scientist was experimenting with artificial intelligence before most of us had even heard of it. Inspired by sci-fi, he "arrogantly" set out to create a way for humans to talk to computers way back in 2008, he said at SXSW London this week.

Arrogant or not, Tunstall-Pedoe's efforts were so successful that Evi, which launched in 2012 around the same time as Apple's Siri , was acquired by Amazon

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