Although the voice ecosystem has long been dominated by the likes of Amazon, Google, and Apple, many brands are exploring the arena of custom owned assistants that give brands more control over data and user experience without a third-party intermediary. With Amazon’s latest announcement, the line is blurring between big tech voice assistants and brand-owned custom assistants. A handful of companies have already created devices that allow for the coexistence of their own assistant alongside a mainstream assistant. European telecommunications companies including Vodafone Spain, Orange, and Deutsche Telekom have all taken this approach and released devices integrated with both their custom assistant and Alexa. By using Amazon’s Alexa Custom Assistant initiative, many more companies will be thinking about how they can leverage the best of both worlds, bringing a generalist assistant alongside a specialist.