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Chatting with the Amazon Echo's Alexa

Ars Technica's Valentina Palladino reviews the Amazon Echo's voice component, Alexa. Read the article: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/one-year-after-alexa-amazons-echo-has-found-a-small-but-smart-niche/

Released on 5/7/2016

Credits

Producer: Jennifer Hahn
Editor: Jennifer Hahn

Transcript

00:01
(playful music)
00:06
Hi there.
00:06
[Narrator] So it's been about a year
00:08
since Amazon's Echo has been available to everybody.
00:11
Everyone was a little bit confused when it first came out
00:13
as in, what is this product supposed to do?
00:16
So now we kind of know that it has a pretty capable speaker,
00:19
you can play music from it and things like that,
00:21
but the biggest feature, of course,
00:22
is Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa.
00:25
(jazz music plays)
00:27
See, she just heard me.
00:28
So, I can call upon Alexa
00:30
to do a whole bunch of different things.
00:32
She can be called upon to play music, to set alarms
00:34
and timers, and to even call you an Uber, get you a pizza,
00:37
a whole bunch of different things,
00:39
including smart home controls,
00:41
so I can control my lights with her.
00:43
A lot of new features have come out
00:45
and most of the news surrounding Alexa and Echo
00:48
since the device has come out has been a lot of products
00:51
getting support for the voice assistant.
00:55
I am not a voice-assistant person.
00:57
I don't use the voice assistant on my phone,
00:59
I have an iPhone, I really don't use Siri that much at all
01:03
especially not when I'm out.
01:05
But, now that I've been using the Echo and Alexa,
01:08
I have been using her in certain ways
01:10
that I don't really ever want to use Siri
01:13
or another voice assistant for.
01:14
So, I can ask the voice assistant to play any type of music
01:17
that I want, and she can play it from Amazon's Prime Music,
01:21
because I am a Prime member so I have that.
01:24
She can play from Spotify now too,
01:26
which is one of the recent additions.
01:28
Alexa, play Happy Birthday.
01:32
Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder from Prime Music
01:36
(Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder plays)
01:38
I don't know about this Stevie Wonder version
01:40
but we'll say, Alexa, stop.
01:42
Alexa, stop.
01:44
So, that's the way you can control the music.
01:47
You can also tell the voice assistant to turn it up,
01:50
turn it down, in terms of the volume.
01:52
You can tell her to go to the next song
01:54
if you just want to skip it.
01:55
So it's very easy, and I will say
01:57
that the speaker is pretty good.
01:59
It can fill up my one-bedroom apartment.
02:01
But I will say that I do have a bluetooth speaker already
02:04
that, unfortunately, has been a little bit replaced
02:07
with the Echo, just because it's so easy
02:08
for me to control the Echo, versus getting up and switching
02:11
things from the bluetooth speaker, so I almost would be
02:15
inclined to get one of the newer devices
02:18
that Amazon has come out with, which is called the Echo Dot.
02:21
And that just gives you the Alexa capabilities
02:23
in a tiny, little disc without the speaker.
02:27
So, I can connect it via bluetooth to my personal bluetooth
02:30
speaker, and just control that via the Dot.
02:34
Alexa, play Happy Birthday.
02:36
[Narrator] Oh, that was the um...
02:38
Happy Birthday To You by Happy Occasions Singers
02:40
from Prime Music.
02:42
(Happy Birthday To You plays)
02:44
Alexa, stop.
02:46
So, Alexa can also control a lot of smart home devices.
02:51
I don't have that many in my apartment
02:52
but what I do have is a Philips Hue Bridge
02:54
with two connected light bulbs, one in my living room
02:57
and one in my bedroom.
02:59
So when I was setting up the Echo,
03:00
I basically just went into the Alexa app
03:02
and I had the device kind of scan the area of my apartment
03:07
for any smart home devices, and it was very quick.
03:10
Anything that Alexa is compatible with,
03:13
she will kind of, automatically recognize
03:15
if something is around.
03:17
When I first connected the light bulbs
03:18
they were individual, so I have the one in my living room
03:21
named 'Living Room', and I have the one in my bedroom
03:24
named 'Bedroom' so I could control them individually.
03:26
However, when you go into the Alexa app,
03:29
you can actually group them directly in there.
03:31
So I grouped the two of them that I have
03:33
so I can control them by saying one command.
03:37
Alexa, turn on the lights.
03:42
[Alexa] Okay
03:43
[Narrator] Alexa, turn off the living room light.
03:48
[Alexa] Okay
03:50
[Narrator] Alexa, turn off the lights.
03:55
[Alexa] Okay.
03:57
So, some of the newer features that the Echo
03:59
and the voice assistant have are something called Skills.
04:01
Now, I call this a Skills store,
04:03
it's basically just a page within the companion app
04:06
where you can basically enable and download features
04:10
that Alexa can do for you.
04:12
But most of them are really not that useful.
04:14
Some of the most useful ones
04:16
are ones that are also attached to other apps
04:18
and other accounts you may have,
04:20
so you can ask Alexa to call you an Uber,
04:22
with the Uber Skill, or with the Domino's Skill,
04:25
you could ask her to order you a pizza.
04:28
One of the weird ones I have is literally just called Boo.
04:31
So, Alexa,
04:33
open Boo.
04:37
Booooo!
04:38
It will literally just Boo you.
04:40
The one thing that about Alexa that you have to remember are
04:43
basically the words and commands that she understands.
04:46
So, a lot of them are just second nature
04:48
like, if you want to skip a song you can say 'Next'
04:50
or things like that, but with a lot of these personalized
04:52
and customized skills, you need to say exactly what the
04:55
developer has Alexa understand.
04:58
Alexa, add 'bottled water' to my shopping list.
05:04
[Alexa] I put 'bottled water' on your shopping list.
05:06
Alexa, set an alarm for 5 p.m. today.
05:11
[Alexa] Alarm set for 5 p.m.
05:14
Alexa, add 'Call Grandmom' to my to-do list.
05:20
[Alexa] I added 'Call Grandma' to your to-do list.
05:22
So here I have the Amazon Alexa app,
05:25
so if we open it up here's just kind of basically
05:28
a running list of the things you've asked Alexa,
05:31
so you can kind of go back and check up on things
05:35
or if you asked her to play some music
05:38
and you wanted to check on what song something was
05:40
if you didn't know it, it will be here
05:41
in this kind of running log
05:43
of all your requests and questions.
05:45
Books and music, so Alexa can also read
05:48
certain books, like audio books out to you.
05:50
Shopping and to-do list we can go in here and see
05:53
the things I added to it.
05:54
And then, if you have the Amazon shopping app on your phone
05:57
you can search for the specific type of item
05:59
that you were looking for.
06:01
You can go to voice training,
06:03
and I did this right when I first set up the Echo,
06:06
I did it once or twice, I believe.
06:09
So you can start a session of voice training
06:10
where you'll basically just be saying commands
06:13
to the Echo and Alexa, and that's basically just practice
06:17
for the voice assistant to learn your voice,
06:20
learn how you speak, and to hear you correctly.
06:23
She's been pretty accurate for me,
06:25
with anything that I've heard.
06:26
She hasn't really heard anything incorrectly
06:28
she just may not hear something totally.
06:31
And if you ever forget any commands,
06:34
you can just go here to the Things to Try page in the app
06:37
and you can look at commands that you can ask her.
06:41
Probably the most useful feature for me, with the Echo
06:45
is the Flash Briefing.
06:46
So if you go into Settings,
06:48
you can set where you want your news to come from.
06:51
Alexa can give you the news headlines
06:54
from a bunch of different places.
06:56
So every morning, I'm just like, Alexa, what's new?
07:01
Here's your Flash Briefing (light music plays)
07:03
In NPR News from today.
07:07
[Narrator] Live from NPR News Alexa, next.
07:11
In ESPN Radio Sports Center
07:14
(loud music plays) ESPN Radio
07:17
So all this has made me really tired
07:19
and we're just going to go to bed now.
07:22
Alexa, turn off the lights.
07:25
(light music plays)
07:27
[Alexa] 493 multiplied by 1,354 is 667,522.
07:35
[Narrator] (laughs) Better at math than me!
07:38
Skills are not... (mumbles) the song
07:40
I don't know what she just...
07:41
(Happy Birthday plays)
07:43
(laughs) What's happening? Alexa, stop!
07:46
Alexa, stop!