Amazon is moving closer to its expected launch of a premium, $5-10/month new Alexa assistant. But according to a new report from Reuters, plans to use Amazon’s own in-house AI have failed, leading the company to turn to Anthropic’s Claude instead.
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AI is getting infused into everything these days, and Amazon’s Alexa is the latest service to receive an AI upgrade. According to a new report, Amazon plans for its AI-powered Alexa to come with a monthly price tag for the first time: a $5-10 monthly subscription.
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Apple partnered with Amazon in 2019 to bring Apple Podcasts support to Amazon Echo devices through the Alexa virtual assistant. This allowed users to ask the assistant to play any of the shows available on Apple’s platform. While this integration was only available in a few countries, today, Apple has made it available in more than 40 regions.
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A new study digging into how Amazon uses Alexa voice recordings from its customers has concluded that the company and third parties leverage the audio to deliver targeted ads directly on Echo smart speakers as well as the web. That’s in contrast to Apple not using Siri recordings for ads and sharing voice data being turned off by default on devices like HomePod and iPhone since 2019. However, Amazon contends the new research is based on “inaccurate inferences or speculation.”
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Amazon Echos are very common smart home devices. The smart speakers provide convenient access to music, control over smart home devices, and quick answers to questions – they can be quite helpful. But these devices are far from perfect, as illustrated by an Alexa device encouraging a ten-year-old to participate in the penny challenge, where you use a penny to touch the prongs of a plug connected to a wall outlet.
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Amazon’s AWS cloud servers are suffering from issues this morning, taking down a handful of services including Disney+, Kindle, Tinder, Roku, and more. Amazon has acknowledged the outage on its official status page, saying that it is working towards a fix.
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The Amazon Alexa app for iOS just received a highly anticipated feature with its latest update. Starting now, you can add the “Ask Alexa” widget in your home screen to talk to the personal assistant with only one click.
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Back in 2019, Apple joined Amazon, Google, the Zigbee Alliance, and over 170 other companies to work on a new smart home standard called CHIP. After some delays, new smart home devices will be able to get certification for CHIP late this year which means we could see the first products arrive on the market in Q4.
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Amazon has pushed an update for its Alexa iOS app today with two notable accessibility-focused improvements – support for the iOS system wide dark/light mode setting as well as compatibility with Apple’s system wide Dynamic Type feature.
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The Alexa iPhone app can now be used completely hands-free — although it does need a little help from Siri to do so…
The UK National Health Service is partnering with Amazon Alexa to bring official government health advice to smart speakers like the Amazon Echo.
Amazon has shared a big update today on its progress with getting its Echo smart speakers and other Alexa enabled devices into the hands of consumers via The Verge. This holiday season has been a big success for the company’s AI and it has now sold over 100 million Alexa devices.
New data from Thinknum shows how hiring for Amazon’s Alexa platform is currently outpacing Apple’s attempts to grow the Siri team, at a rate of nearly 5:1. As of writing, there were about 750 job openings mentioning “Alexa” from Amazon, with just under 170 from Apple with specific mention of “Siri“.
There’s an app currently circulating around Apple’s App Store pretending to be the official set-up companion for Amazon’s Alexa, and it’s fooled its way to the top of the download charts. At the time of this writing, the fake app sits at #60 overall in the general “Top Free” apps section, while in an even more concerning top 10 place under the Utilities sections at #6.
After the EU’s GDPR passed earlier this year, tech companies have been required to let users request all the data kept on file. Now, we’re hearing about an unfortunate case where Amazon sent 1,700 Alexa voice recordings to the wrong user in Germany.
Apple Music integration with Amazon Echo speakers has been an interesting development. At first Amazon did all the marketing, with Apple remaining mostly quiet. Yesterday, we spotted Apple promoting the functionality on the App Store and also shared a new trick.
Now, Amazon has confirmed that it will be rolling out Apple Music support for third-party Alexa-enabled speakers.
iHome has today announced two new speaker products with built-in Alexa support. The new vanity mirror includes 10x magnification, Bluetooth speaker, and a USB charging port. The new bedside alarm clock comes with a dimmable LED, programmable smart buttons, and more.
There are plenty of wireless speakers out there, but if you want to use a voice command to play Apple Music, there’s just one option open to you at present: HomePod. That’s about to change, with the ability to play Apple Music on Echo speakers …
I’ve played around a bit with Alexa, and even considered buying an Echo Dot or two before the launch of HomePod, but in the end decided to wait it out.
However, while Hunter Douglas is still promising HomeKit support for our Luxaflex Duette blinds, and was expecting to get there by now, certification has been delayed until later in the year. In the meantime, it’s gone ahead with the launch of the new bridge which brings voice control to the blinds – but so far only for Alexa and Google Home …
Amazon has rolled out a notable update for its Alexa app on iOS today. With this update, users can now use the Alexa virtual assistant directly from their iOS device to control smart home accessories, ask questions, and much more.
While Apple’ Siri digital assistant is still pretty limited in its functionality, despite it being the main input for HomePod, Amazon has been experimenting and adding new features at a rapid pace.
Recently, Amazon added a ‘Follow-Up Mode’ to its Echo line of devices, which allows users to repeatedly say commands to the assistant without saying “Alexa” again. The company even added a ‘feature’ where the Echo would laugh at you sporadically. Today, the tech-giant is adding a ‘Brief Mode’ which disables the chatter aspect of the Echo, and replaces it with a simple chime once a task is completed.
Amazon on Friday is having issues with its cloud-based “Amazon Web Services” system that is causing outages on several major platforms including the company’s own Alexa service.
Several large companies such as Amazon, Google, and Apple have been heavily relying on cloud infrastructure for their services for several years now. Any major outage can interrupt service for thousands, if not millions of users worldwide.
