Developers can now create new skills and
capabilities for Alexa, the brain behind Amazon Echo
Developer preview starts today
(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Alexa is the cloud-based voice service that
powers Amazon Echo, a new category of device designed around your
voice. Today, Amazon announced the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), a
collection of self-service APIs and tools that make it fast and
easy for developers to create new voice-driven capabilities for
Alexa. With a few lines of code, developers can easily integrate
existing web services with Alexa or, in just a few hours, they can
build entirely new experiences designed around voice. No experience
with speech recognition or natural language understanding is
required—Amazon does all the work to hear, understand, and process
the customer’s spoken request so a developer doesn’t have to. The
Alexa Skills Kit is free—learn more and get started with the
preview at https://developer.amazon.com/ASK.
Examples of skills developers can create with the Alexa Skills
Kit include:
- A hobbyist developer can enable Alexa
to access his or her child’s school lunch menu—then, each morning
simply ask, “Alexa, ask Ballard Elementary School what’s for lunch
today” and decide whether to pack a lunch for the child.
- A device maker with an
Internet-connected sprinkler system can integrate its sprinklers
with Alexa, so a customer can say, “Alexa, ask my sprinkler to
water my lawn for 15 minutes.”
- A surf report provider can create a new
skill for Alexa that lets customers ask for the latest conditions
at their favorite break by saying “Alexa, ask Surf Status for my
local forecast.”
- The maker of a smart vacuum cleaner can
create a skill for Alexa that lets customers control their vacuum
by saying “Alexa, tell the vacuum to start cleaning the living
room.”
- A fitness service can enable Alexa to
access a user’s workout history, so a customer can say “Alexa, ask
My Fitness how many miles I have run this week.”
- A baseball fantasy league can make a
new skill for Alexa, so managers can simply say, “Alexa, ask
Fantasy Baseball to change my lineup and start Felix Hernandez
today.”
“When we launched Amazon Echo we immediately heard from
developers about the innovative voice experiences they would create
if they had access to an SDK,” said Greg Hart, Vice President,
Amazon Echo and Alexa Voice Services. “Today, we’re making the
Alexa Skills Kit available to any developer, maker, or general
hobbyist that wants to invent on behalf of customers, creating new
skills and capabilities. We can’t wait to see what developers are
going to invent with this technology.”
Creating an Alexa skill is easy and fast. Developers simply
write cloud-hosted code that interacts with Alexa’s cloud-based
APIs to process customer requests. Alexa does the work to hear,
understand, and resolve the customer’s spoken request, and then
maps the service call to the developer’s endpoint.
The easiest way to build a skill for Alexa is to use AWS
Lambda, an innovative compute service that runs a developer’s
code in response to triggers and automatically manages the compute
resources in the AWS Cloud, so there is no need for a developer to
provision or continuously run servers. Developers simply upload the
code for the new Alexa skill they are creating, and AWS Lambda
does the rest, executing the code in response to Alexa voice
interactions and automatically managing the compute resources on
the developer’s behalf.
Here are a few of the developers who are using the ASK to create
new skills for Alexa:
Pebblebee, a hardware company making customized Bluetooth
trackers and sensors, is using ASK to enable customers to track
items and check sensors using voice. “We've learned over the past
few years that it’s not always intuitive to use a visual app with
so many features. Using voice commands simplifies the complexity
for customers,” said Daniel Daoura, Co-Founder and CEO of
Pebblebee. “We’re thrilled to use the Alexa Skills Kit to integrate
Alexa with Pebblebee’s sensor information, so a customer can simply
ask, ‘Alexa, find my keys,’ or ‘Alexa, how warm is the baby’s
room?’ or ‘Alexa, is my dog nearby?’”
Intuit, maker of financial software, is planning a reference
implementation using Alexa to access Mint.com, the free web-based
personal financial management service. “The Alexa Skills Kit allows
us to begin experimenting on our vision for voice user
interfaces,” said Wolf Paulus, Staff Software Engineer at Intuit.
“Since Alexa is cloud-based, as soon as a prompt is spoken, the
service could respond with the most up-to-date information,
allowing us to quickly provide our customers with updates that are
useful to them, like ‘what is my account balance’ or ‘how long
until I reach my savings goal?’. We look forward
to experimenting with new ways for our customers to
access their data.”
StubHub, an online marketplace for sports, concert, theater, and
other live entertainment event tickets is using Alexa to enable
customers to purchase tickets and more using voice. “At StubHub, we
are constantly thinking of ways to make the live event experience
easier and more fun,” said Parag Vaish, Head of Mobile at StubHub.
“By bringing StubHub’s great experience to Alexa, we’re able to
reach more fans by allowing our customers to use their voice to
engage with our content to do things like ask, ‘Alexa, ask
StubHub what events are happening this weekend near me?’ or ‘Alexa,
ask StubHub to send event suggestions to me for tomorrow.’”
Octoblu, Citrix's enterprise Internet of Things platform, is
using ASK for voice-activated automation of business tasks, like
setting up meetings on Citrix GoToMeeting. “The Alexa Skills Kit
provides an ideal solution for our enterprise automation solution,
Octoblu,” said Chris Matthieu, Director, IOT Engineering at Citrix.
“By integrating Alexa’s robust APIs, Octoblu can now facilitate a
wide variety of voice-activated automations, and the advanced,
reliable voice technology makes us confident end users will have a
great experience. Using Alexa with Octoblu, a customer can set up a
GoToMeeting, without having to stop what they’re doing—they can
just tell their Echo to schedule it and keep going.”
AOL, a global media technology company that curates content from
brands and web sites, is using ASK to enable customers to listen to
AOL daily headlines and articles. “Alexa enables readers to access
content from across our brands by simply using their voice,” said
Drew Lesicko, Head of Mobile Product at AOL. “Using Alexa, an avid
reader could have Echo read them their favorite headlines or
articles from TechCrunch or news of the day from any of our other
AOL properties. This allows us to continue to reach our audience,
even if they are not in front of a tablet or computer—an exciting
prospect for AOL, and a great use case for our customers.”
Glympse, a mobile service that provides a fast, free, and simple
way to share your location in real time with the people you trust
from a GPS-enabled mobile phone, is using ASK to enable customers
to request location details via voice. “We are always looking for
innovative solutions to expand our ecosystem, and Alexa’s cutting
edge voice technology was a natural fit,” said Steve Miller,
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Glympse. “Location
information—the question of ‘where are you?’ or ‘when will you
arrive?’—is pervasive in daily life. We are excited to use the
Alexa Skills Kit to make it even easier for people to request
location details by saying ‘where is Bob?’ or ‘when will Jack get
here?”
The first new capabilities built by developers using the ASK
will launch later this year. The free Alexa Skills Kit developer
preview is available starting today—get started at
https://developer.amazon.com/ASK.
In addition, Amazon today announced that the Alexa Voice Service
(AVS), the same service that powers Amazon Echo, is now available
to third party hardware makers who want to integrate Alexa into
their devices—for free. For example, a Wi-Fi alarm clock maker can
create an Alexa-enabled clock radio, so a customer can talk to
Alexa as they wake up, asking “what’s the weather today?” or “what
time is my first meeting?” Read the press release:
www.amazon.com/AVS.
About Amazon
Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The
company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire phone, Fire
tablets, Fire TV, and Amazon Echo are some of the products and
services pioneered by Amazon.
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