ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,354,596, issued on July 8, was assigned to Amazon Technologies Inc. (Seattle).

"Centralized feedback service for performance of virtual assistant" was invented by Gary Zhong (Seattle), Milo Oostergo (Eemnes, Netherlands), Cassity Barrows Queen (Seattle), Aakarsh Nair (Lynnwood, Calif.), Collin Charles Davis (Seattle) and Yu-Hsiang Cheng (Bothell, Wash.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This disclosure describes a feedback service that collects feedback for skills, or capabilities, of a virtual assistant that interacts with users, and associates the feedback with the appropriate skills. Virtual assistants interact with users via voice-enabled...