Amazon wants Alexa to be in your home, and it wants Alexa to be the digital voice assistant that takes care of the majority of your IoT needs, but more to the point it wants Alexa to simply offer up new and meaningful functionality to consumers for smart, connected home use. Earlier this week, Amazon and Intel announced a new partnership that will be the start of realizing that goal. Amazon states that they along with Intel see a major opportunity to introduce the type of experience that voice assistants such as Alexa can provide to “millions” of new consumers, and so their partnership is about turning that possibility into a reality, and it’s aiming to encourage both developers and manufacturers alike to work on ushering in new Alexa-powered products.
While the list of skills that Alexa is capable of is growing, and there are a few devices out there powered by the Alexa software, Amazon sees far more potential. This is where Intel comes in. The chip manufacturer will be seeking to provide not only a reference design of a smart speaker that is powered by Alexa software and Intel technology, but also an Intel-based smart home hub with which will allow Alexa’s vast library of skills to control different actions around the home, for which Intel and Amazon will likely petition the help of developers to work on new skills for use alongside existing ones.
Together, Intel and Amazon’s two new initiatives want to push the smart home ecosystem further, and their hope is that with things such as the Intel-based reference design for an Alexa-powered smart speaker, that manufacturers will be able to take that reference design and more quickly put together and launch products that utilize the power of Amazon’s Alexa software. Intel and Amazon have illustrated their dreams quite perfectly through the video below, which showcases a tiny home that has loads of Alexa-enabled functionality throughout, turning what seems like a run of the mill tiny home into a a much more modern and technology savvy home that is filled to the brim with convenience thanks to its voice-assisted capabilities. Also part of this new duo of initiatives, Amazon is going to be releasing an SDK that will help developers to add voice and video functions to connected devices.
