The Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Echo Dot, Echo Studio, and Amazon Tap speakers created by Amazon Lab126 were the first devices to incorporate Alexa. It may be used to communicate with voice commands, play music, create to-do lists, set alarms, stream podcasts, play audiobooks, and provide real-time information like as weather, sports, traffic, and news. Using itself as a system for home automation, Alexa can also manage a number of smart gadgets. By adding "skills" (extra functionality created by third-party companies, in other contexts more usually referred to as applications), users may expand the capabilities of Alexa. Examples of skills include weather programmes and audio features. It does these tasks using weak AI techniques such as automated voice recognition, natural language processing, and others.
Most Alexa-enabled devices let users wake them up by saying a wake word, like "Alexa" or "Amazon," while some (like the Amazon mobile app on iOS or Android and the Amazon Dash Wand) require a button click. However, some phones also let users speak commands like "Alexa" or "Alexa wake" to activate Alexa.
More than 10,000 people were employed by Amazon as of November 2018 to work on Alexa and related products. Over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices had been sold, according to a January 2019 announcement by Amazon's devices team.
Amazon announced a number of new products in September 2019, breaking several records while vying for market share in the global smart home sector. The brand-new Echo Studio made history as the first smart speaker to have 360 and Dolby sound. A third-generation Amazon Echo, an Echo Show 8, an Echo plug-in device, an Echo Flex, Alexa built-in wireless headphones, Echo buds, Alexa built-in glasses, Echo frames, an Alexa built-in Ring, and an Echo Loop were among the other new gadgets.
The Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Amazon Appstore all provide companion apps. Owners of Alexa-enabled devices may add skills, manage alarms, control music, and see shopping lists via the app. Users may also evaluate the text that has been detected on the app screen and submit feedback to Amazon on how well or poorly it was recognised. Additionally, a web interface is provided to configure compatible devices (e.g., Amazon Echo, Amazon Dot, Amazon Echo Show).
In addition to many other pre-programmed tasks, Alexa can set timers, share the weather, make lists, retrieve Wikipedia articles, and many more things right out of the box. [30] Users can wake up an Alexa-enabled device by using a chosen "wake word" (the default is just "Alexa"). When Alexa receives a command or query, she waits for it before carrying out the necessary task. When a query is posed, Alexa turns sound waves into text and is able to collect data from a variety of sources. To provide appropriate and correct replies, the data is occasionally sent behind the scenes to a range of vendors, such as WolframAlpha, iMDB, AccuWeather, Yelp, Wikipedia, and others.
Alexa-enabled devices feature built-in compatibility for Spotify and Pandora accounts and can stream music from the owner's Amazon Music accounts. From a phone or tablet, Alexa can play music from streaming services like Apple Music and Google Play Music.Through third-party skills that users may activate, Alexa can carry out tasks in addition to those that are already pre-programmed.
"Question of the Day" and "National Geographic Geo Quiz" for trivia, "TuneIn Live" for listening to live sports events and news stations, "Big Sky" for hyper-local weather updates, "Sleep and Relaxation Sounds" for listening to calming sounds, "Sesame Street" for kid-friendly entertainment, and "Fitbit" for Fitbit users who want to check in on their health stats were some of the most well-liked Alexa skills in 2018.
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