Question: Will Amazon award a $1M "Alexa Prize" for a chatbot in 2017?
Amazon has recently launched an ["Alexa Prize" competition](https://developer.amazon.com/alexaprize) toward developing an effective "Socialbot" that can "[Engage] customers in a conversation about popular topics such as Entertainment, Fashion, Politics, Sports, and Technology."

Twelve sponsored university teams and some number of additional teams will compete from April until November 2017, using Amazon employees, users, and judges to narrow down to finalists in August, then have a final competition with a 3-judge panel in November.

The best team will win $500K, and there is an additional $1M prize if "their socialbot achieves the grand challenge of conversing coherently and engagingly with humans on popular topics for 20 minutes."

As specified in the [FAQ](https://developer.amazon.com/alexaprize/faq), this is *not* a Turing test – the winning bot may be readily distinguishable from a human.  It should, however, be "human like" in its ability to converse.  Details of the judging procedure are in the [official rules](https://developer.amazon.com/alexaprize/contest-rules).  In brief, each judge has a "red button" they can press when feel that as a user they would no longer enjoy talking to the bot.
Created: 2016-12-13
Resolved: 2018-01-03
Answer: no