Your Amazon Echo speakers can now work as an intercom

For Canadian and U.S. owners of Amazon Echo speakers, you can now turn your speakers into a one-way intercom system. The setup of Alexa Announcements isn’t complicated. All you need to do is talk to Alexa and say things like, “Alexa announce that dinner is ready.” And then all the Echo devices in your home will make the announcement. Or you can use other hot words like “Alexa, tell everyone…” or Alexa, broadcast…” It isn’t clear yet if this will work on other Alexa-enabled devices but for now we’re assuming it’s only for Echo speakers.

Source: Android Authority

Amazon claims its working on the laughing Echo devices

It’s like one of our worst nightmares coming true. Some Amazon Echo users are reporting that Alexa has started laughing at random without any prompting. One user on Twitter claims it started to laugh as he was about to fall asleep, another one on Reddit describes the laugh as sounding almost like a real person (after Alexa refused to turn off his lights after three tries). Amazon says they are aware of the issue and are working on the matter.

Here’s Amazon’s official statement about the issue: “In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’ which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to ‘Sure, I can laugh’ followed by laughter.” 

Source: Gizmodo

Amazon tipped to be trying to add real-time translation to Alexa

Possibly taking its cues from Google Assistant, Amazon is reportedly trying to turn its Alexa voice assistant into a real-time translator. What would be different this time around is that it won’t just translate phrases but also supposedly include local culture into its responses. Amazon is reportedly looking into making this feature available on multiple devices and it’s hoping to translate multiple conversations at once. It isn’t clear though where Amazon’s translation skills will be coming from. But if this is happening, we should hear about it soon enough.

Source: The Verge

Amazon Alexa can now send out text messages, rolling out in the US first

Amazon Alexa is playing a bit of catch up with other voice assistants like Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant with this latest update. Alexa can now send out SMS messages but with a few caveats. You’ll need to have an Android phone that’s linked to your Alexa device. But it send to any device that can receive text messages (including iPhones). Also, as mentioned in the title, it’s rolling out in the US first.

You just need to say, for example, “Alexa, text Jerry” and then dictate your message to your Amazon Alexa device. It’ll then “find the best way to send the message,” whether that be through SMS or the Alexa messaging service. If you want to send emojis, there’s no way to do that just yet. To turn on the feature, you’ll need to open the Alexa app and head to the Conversations tab, then Contacts, then My Profile to turn on the Send SMS setting. There’s no word yet when the feature is coming to Canada but what Amazon Alexa can do now is make phone calls to other Echo devices or most regular phone numbers in the country as well as in the US and Mexico.

Source: CNN