Alexa wants to make sure you really said her name

Posted - May 17 2017 02:18

Alexa wants to make sure you really said her name

That means that the scope for the sorts of notifications users can expect is really only limited by what developers decide to add.

Notifications will be provided in a couple of different ways, including an audible chime and a pausing green light using the LED ring on the Echo, Echo Dot or Echo Show hardware.

Anyone who has an Amazon Echo will know how annoying it can be when the device activates itself after falsely detecting that someone has uttered its wake word - usually "Alexa".

Amazon has the feature set up so that it won't slow down Alexa's response time.

The move would make Alexa the first among companies like Google and Microsoft whose third-party voice apps can proactively send notifications.

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Soon, Amazon Echo owners and other Alexa users will be able to opt in for notifications from select skills.

While notifications can be useful for certain apps to, say, announce a new podcast episode or share a breaking news alert, developers could misuse the notification capability as is often the case with push notifications on apps.

Amazon (amzn) said that people can ask Alexa, which is also embedded in Amazon's web-connected Echo speaker, the following two phrases to trigger a notification: "Alexa, what did I miss?" or "Alexa, what are my notifications?"

The Washington Post, AccuWeather, Just Eat, and Life360 will be among the first to update their Alexa skills with support for notifications.

Amazon said Tuesday it will let customers enable notifications - similar to the push alerts available in smartphones and computers - for various Alexa applications.

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