Amazon Echo, with its digital assistant Alexa, has garnered a lot of great feedbacks because of its skills and usefulness in one’s smart home. It is used through different voice commands. ( Ethan Miller/Getty Images )
Ever since Amazon Echo was released in the United States in June 2015 and later in the United Kingdom in September 2016, it has continued to garner rave reviews. It is now available in white, other than the original black color, and is capable of doing a lot of things that focus on overall utility.
Echo is Amazon’s wireless smart speaker powered by a digital assistant, Alexa. It doesn’t only play music from different streaming services via the owner’s voice command, but also plays the central point of the owner’s smart home. Every devices around the owner’s home and office, Alexa can integrate with those — showing how intelligent this AI is.
Amazon Echo has been open to third-party developers as well; meaning, new features and utilities can be added to it in the raft. As it learns and gets new skills every day, it goes to show that Alexa is in a constant state of evolution — thus making Echo smarter, more proficient, and more useful. Although Amazon was initially introduced as a provider of online retail and delivery services, it seems that the company is also leading the way when it comes to smart home assistants.
Amazon Echo is not just limited to doing what is mentioned above. It can play all the owner’s music from Prime Music, Spotify, and more via a voice command. It can also fill the room with immersive, 360-degree omni-directional audio. It allows hands-free convenience with voice control as well.
Moreover, Amazon Echo can answer questions, read audiobooks and news, give info on local businesses, report traffic and weather conditions, provide sports scores and schedules, and more thru Alexa’s voice service. It can even control lights, switches, thermostats, and other smart home devices compatible with it, according to Know Your Mobile.
Furthermore, Amazon Echo owners can force it to update its own software to learn more skills. Owners can also access Echo’s settings from smartphone apps or from a web browser. They can force Echo to go silent by disabling Echo’s listening capabilities as well. What’s more, Echo features a ton of games hidden as Easter eggs are hidden — and not only that, Echo’s Alexa can even tell jokes!
Alexa was first encountered on Echo inside a smaller, but equally potent virtual assistant device called Echo Dot — a circular, puck-sized speaker. However, it is not a standalone product since it is used to extend connections with Alexa and does exactly the same things as Echo do.
Indeed, Amazon has built one of the most useful, robust, and functional AIs ever. It is then expected that people will be seeing more of Alexa in cars, phones, and computers soon.
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