Alexa now knows how to do millions of things,
including new capabilities across Routines, Music, Smart Home, Home
Monitoring, Alexa Calling, Amazon FreeTime on Alexa and more
All new Alexa features begin rolling out to
select new and existing Echo devices in the coming months
(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Alongside a new lineup of Echo devices, Amazon
today introduced new Alexa features that help make life even more
convenient, safe, and entertaining. New capabilities include
entertainment features like left-right stereo pairing, TIDAL, and
Amazon Music New Release Notifications; productivity features like
email management, step-by-step cooking, and location-based
Routines; smart home and home monitoring features like Alexa Guard,
Hunches, and Local Voice Control; and FreeTime on Alexa features
like kid-focused Routines, podcasts, new skills, and more.
“The Alexa service is always getting smarter, whether you’re
using the Echo you bought three years ago or an Echo Show you buy
tomorrow. We have thousands of engineers and scientists inventing
on behalf of customers, and today we’re excited to introduce even
more features to help make customers’ lives simpler, safer, and
more convenient,” said Tom Taylor, Senior Vice President, Amazon
Alexa. “Soon customers will be able to manage their email, easily
secure their home, watch the shows they love on Echo Show, and make
their daily routines more productive—all just by asking Alexa.”
“Over the past year we’ve made incredible scientific advances in
Alexa’s Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). We have applied deep neural
networks to advance Alexa's ability to detect challenging
acoustic phenomena such as whispered speech and anomalous events
like glass breaking; made breakthroughs in combining transfer
learning and deep learning to teach Alexa new languages and
capabilities faster; improved contextual understanding and added
memory to help customers discover skills and ask follow-up
questions more naturally; and used active learning and unsupervised
learning to improve foundational wake word detection, speech
recognition, and natural language understanding,” said Rohit
Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist, Amazon Alexa. “We’ve
only scratched the surface of A.I.-powered inventions and we’ll
continue to invent ways to make Alexa more useful for our
customers.”
Make Your Home Smarter and Safer
Alexa Guard
Alexa can help keep your home safe when you’re away with Alexa
Guard–just say, “Alexa, I’m leaving” to activate Guard. When you
enable Guard, Alexa can send you Smart Alerts about the sound of
glass-breaking, smoke detectors, or carbon monoxide alarms detected
in your home. Alexa can also intuitively turn lights on and off to
help deter intruders using Away Lighting and can integrate with
alarm systems from Ring and ADT to keep your home safe. This
feature will be available on select Echo devices later this
year.
Hunches
As you interact with your smart home, Alexa learns more about
your day-to-day usage and can sense when connected smart devices
such as lights, locks, switches, and plugs are not in the state
that you prefer. For example, if your living room light is on when
you say “Alexa, good night,” Alexa will respond with “Good night.
By the way, your living room light is on. Do you want me to turn it
off?” This feature will be available later this year.
Frustration Free Setup
We want to remove the frustration of connecting new smart home
devices to Wi-Fi by making it as simple as plugging them in. As a
first step toward realizing this vision, we’re rolling out Wi-Fi
simple setup so customers can connect smart devices to their Wi-Fi
network and Alexa by simply using their voice or scanning a barcode
on the back of their smart device using the Alexa app. Wi-Fi simple
setup is initially available with new Echo devices, the new Amazon
Smart Plug, and AmazonBasics Microwave. Additional devices will be
added in the future.
Local Voice Control
When there’s an internet outage, or if you’re in an area with
unreliable internet connection, Local Voice Control allows you to
still use your voice to control lights, plugs, and switches that
are connected to an Echo device with a built-in smart home hub,
such as the all-new Echo Plus or all-new Echo Show.
Video Doorbell
In the coming weeks, Echo Show devices will have a 2-way talk
feature that works with Ring and August doorbell cameras. When the
doorbell rings or motion is detected by the security camera, just
say “Alexa, answer the front door” to see and talk to whoever is
there without having to open the door. Additionally, Alexa will be
able to play a chime and make an announcement when someone rings
your Ring and August doorbell cameras. You can also use Alexa
Routines to play custom announcements when the front door camera
detects movement or someone rings the doorbell.
Alexa Makes Your Life More Convenient
New Alexa Routines
Customize your daily routine more than ever before through
adding location-based Alexa Routines that trigger when you leave or
arrive at home or work. Plus add timed delays in between Alexa
Routine actions; add time-limited music—great for white noise or
sleep sounds; and add temperature and motion based Alexa Routines
that trigger when the temperature in a room is too high or too low,
or when motion is detected.
Location-Based Reminders
You can set reminders to trigger when you leave or arrive at
home or work. Simply say, “Alexa, remind me to take the chicken out
when I get home,” and when you arrive, Alexa will automatically
speak the reminder and send a notification to your phone.
Cook with Alexa
Cooking with Alexa makes Echo devices even more useful in the
kitchen. Simply ask Alexa for step-by-step cooking instructions
from Kitchen Stories, Allrecipes, Epicurious, Food52, TheKitchn,
and SideChef. Say “Alexa, let’s start cooking,” and Alexa will walk
you step-by-step through your favorite recipe.
Multi-step Requests
Ask Alexa to do multiple things at once within one request. For
example, add several items to your shopping list by saying “Alexa,
add bananas, paper towels, and cat food to my shopping list;” or
turn the Echo volume up and start a playlist by saying, “Alexa,
play Pandora at volume 8.”
Email Integration
If you need to manage your personal inbox but aren’t able to sit
with your computer or smartphone, all you need to do is ask Alexa
to check and reply to email through Gmail, Outlook.com, and
Hotmail.com. Simply link your email in your Alexa app and say,
“Alexa, do I have emails from Sarah?”
Whisper Mode
Gone are the days of waking up your spouse or partner to ask
Alexa for the weather in the morning or turn your alarm off.
Whisper Mode is a new feature that allows you to whisper to Alexa,
and she will whisper her response back to you.
Even More Calling Options
Skype voice and video calling with Alexa will allow customers to
connect with the hundreds of millions of people using Skype around
the world. Just say, “Alexa, call Jimmy on Skype” to quickly
connect with Jimmy anywhere he uses Skype.
Built-In Web Browser
Echo Show now has a built-in web browser that can be opened by
saying, “Alexa, open Silk” or “Alexa, open Firefox.” Once open, you
can use the on-screen keyboard to type a URL and visit your
favorite website. And like other browsers, you can bookmark your
favorite websites for easy access.
Alexa Makes Life More Entertaining
New Music Service – TIDAL
Later this year, global music streaming platform TIDAL will be
available on all Echo devices. This service leverages the new Music
Skill API also announced today. Learn more about the developer
benefits of the new, self-service Music Skill API:
www.developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/
Left-Right Stereo Pairing
With the new left-right stereo pairing feature, you can connect
two of the same, supported Echo devices for stereo sound.
Amazon Music New Release Notifications
With Amazon Music’s New Release Notifications, customers will
soon be able to ask Alexa to follow their favorite artist, and
receive notifications on their Echo device or within the Amazon
Music mobile app when an artist releases a new album or track.
After asking to hear the new album or track, customers will also be
surprised to hear some of their favorite artists’ voices delivering
the message themselves on their Echo.
Overlapping Groups
With overlapping groups, you can add one Echo device to several
multi-room music groups. For example, the Echo in your kitchen can
be included in both the “Kitchen” group for daily listening, and
the “Downstairs” group when you’re having friends over on the
weekend.
Preferred Speaker Setup
Set your preferred speaker for music playback in your Alexa
app—be it an Echo device, a third-party AVS speaker, or a
multi-room music group. When you want to play music in that space,
simply say “Alexa, play rock music” and it will stream from your
preferred speaker.
New Video Services for Echo Show
Integrations with Fire TV Recast, Hulu, and NBC will make live
TV viewing and on-demand streaming available on any Echo Show.
Simply say “Alexa, watch Good Morning America” to watch the news
with your morning coffee, or “Alexa, tune to ESPN on Hulu” to catch
up with your favorite sports team. Click here to learn more about
the new Echo Show.
Skills and Games for the Screen
Tens of thousands of skills are available on the all-new Echo
Show, including many visually enhanced experiences. You can get up
to the minute stock information and news updates at a glance with
CNBC, quickly check your Capital One balance, play Who Wants to be
a Millionaire or turn anytime into story time with the Amazon
Storytime skill.
Visual Alexa Blueprints
With the new Greeting Card Blueprint, you can create and share
personalized greeting cards to celebrate birthdays, friendships,
and other special occasions.
All-New FreeTime on Alexa Features
Kid Routines
Parents can now easily set Routines with FreeTime on Alexa using
a set of simple pre-configured Alexa Routines. For example, parents
can enable the Good Night Routine in the Alexa app, and when
parents or kids say, “Alexa, good night,” Alexa will offer a
parent-customized goodnight message, tell them an interesting fact,
turn off the lights, turn on the night light, and start sleep
sounds or white noise. After School, Bed Time, and Good Morning
Routines can also be customized with white noise timers, smart home
controls, music, personalized Alexa messages, and more.
Kid Podcasts
Kids already love listening to Audible through FreeTime
Unlimited on Alexa, and soon FreeTime Unlimited customers will have
over 1,000 Audible books available to enjoy. To offer even more
content, using Amazon FreeTime Unlimited on Alexa, kids can listen
to popular kid and family podcasts, including Brain’s On from
American Public Radio, Story Pirates from Gimlet Media, and Ear
Snacks from Andrew and Polly. These podcasts offer educational and
age-appropriate news, stories, and more.
Kid Activity Skills
New FreeTime Unlimited on Alexa skills like Train Like an
Avenger and Animal Workout help get families active and moving
together, all while using their imagination. Plus new skills like
Oregon Trail, Star Wars Missions, and Animal Rescue offer fun and
educational content.
Learn more about FreeTime Unlimited on Alexa:
www.amazon.com/FreeTimeUnlimited
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets,
Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and
services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit
amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
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