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Alexa, an always-listening Siri for your living room. It’s Amazon’s vision of the platform of the future, one that gives you the ability to control your home by voice. Say the word Alexa, and the device’s top glows blue, awaiting your command. Like Siri, she can respond to a laundry list of queries and requests—Alexa, how tall is Mount Everest? Alexa, could you set an alarm for tomorrow morning? But whereas Apple designed Siri primarily for mobile consumption through iPhones and iPads—push a button and talk—Alexa is invisible and ever-present, a natural interface for the connected home. For decades, we’ve heard and seen visions of what the smart home of tomorrow could bring, from HAL 9000 and The Jetsons to Minority Report and Her. But this promise has leapt toward reality in recent years, thanks to improved technology and economic manufacturing, growing venture-capital (and crowdfunded) investments, and a network of socalled Internet of Things devices. Just as they did on PCs and mobile
The logical next step is to allow people to shop without having to touch a thing—making the Amazon Prime experience even more compelling. devices before, tech giants are racing to build the next big platform, this time for the connected home—a market poised to grow to $58 billion (almost R790 billion) in the next half-decade. The domestic arena has tempted tech giants at least as far back as Microsoft’s release of the Xbox
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console in 2001. But now, rather than only battle to build the connected-TV box that could be a digital hub for the home, these companies have shifted their focus from hardware to voice interfaces, which may be the trick to getting their ecosystems widespread adoption. Apple’s HomeKit platform will enable Siri to control devices such as the window shades and coffee maker; Google has integrated voice commands into Nest, the smart-home company it spent $3.2 billion (R43.5 billion) to acquire; Microsoft is making its personal assistant, Cortana, a key feature for the Xbox One. What makes Alexa stand out in this crowded market is that Amazon is already an essential homemanagement tool for a whole lot of people, especially the estimated 40 million who have signed up for Prime membership. Run out of paper towels, need to replace your smoke detector, or just want to cue up the latest episode of Orphan Black? With its e-commerce reach and growing video ambitions, Amazon is there for you. The logical next step is to allow people to shop without having to touch a thing—making the Prime experience even more compelling. As the Echo took shape years ago at Amazon’s secretive Lab126, best known for developing the Kindle e-reader, the responsible teams were bullish about the myriad use cases for an ever-listening virtual assistant inside the home: If you’re in the kitchen with hands covered in barbecue sauce, why not have Alexa set a timer for your ribs rather than fiddle with your iPhone? What if she could read you the news as you took your morning shower? Or order an Uber when you’re hurrying to catch your flight? The applications were seemingly limitless. But the company was wary of spending resources to solve problems that didn’t exist—or creating new ones. Bezos was personally involved in keeping Alexa’s voice cues simple, to avoid subjecting users to unnecessary and frustrating
ASK HER ANY THING HOW A M A ZON’S A L E X A CA N HEL P AT HOME 01
Cooking Use Alexa to set a timer, add items to your phone’s grocery list, or offer meal tips through the cooking-assistant app.
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Media and Entertainment Alexa syncs with iHeartRadio, Pandora and Amazon Prime’s media library; streams audiobooks through Audible.com; and can queue up news from The Economist or TMZ.
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Personal Assistance Amazon’s voice service will do everything from checking your Google Calendar for appointments to defining or spelling a word.
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Shopping Further streamlining Amazon’s vaunted one-click ordering, Alexa allows Prime users to reorder goods simply by asking.
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Home Tech Alexa is able to control Philips Hue lights, and turn on and off appliances plugged into Belkin’s connected outlets. She also works with Wi-Fi–connected garage-door openers and home-security systems.
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