Alexa Live: Improved SDKs, new routines – and advertising on Alexa devices
Alexa should work better with other assistants, says Amazon at its developer conference. Skills can be advertised in the future.
At its “Alexa Live 2022” developer fair, Amazon announced, among other things, that Alexa would be able to work better and advertise skills. The event starts on Wednesday at 6 p.m., voonze online was able to speak to Amazon Vice President Aaron Rubenson in advance.
A main topic of the conference is the cooperation of Alexa with other voice assistants that are already on devices from some manufacturers. In the future, Alexa will be able to share space with the manufacturer’s own language assistants with different activation words in devices from Sonos, Pioneer and Skullcandy, for example. An important point for this are the so-called “Universal Device Commands”, for example to stop music playback: Alexa also stops the music on demand if it was previously started by a command to the other assistant.
Revamped smart home controls
Cooperation is also an issue elsewhere. Thanks to the revised SDK, manufacturers will be able to connect devices to Alexa quickly and inexpensively via the “Alexa Connect Kit” hardware module, which has been available for some time. Matter is a standard that connects smart home components across manufacturers.
(Picture: Pioneer)
An extension of the “Alexa Ambient Home Dev Kit” should in future allow the control of smart home devices via more attractive interfaces – and also offer access to more features than before. Amazon also wants to add to the ads in the automotive sector.
From the user’s point of view, it should be particularly interesting that Alexa skills can be equipped with ready-made routines in the future to cover typical application scenarios. As an example, Amazon gave a routine in the skill of the car manufacturer Jaguar: If this is triggered, it checks, among other things, whether the vehicle in question is locked and the anti-theft protection is activated.
Finally advertising!
Another announcement is likely to be received very differently by developers and users. In the future, Amazon will enable developers to advertise skills on Alexa devices for a fee. This gives developers the opportunity to draw attention to their applications, while users may feel disturbed by the advertising.
When asked by c’t, Aaron Rubenson did not want to comment on how much advertising should run on an Alexa device, nor how much developers would have to pay for it. Rubenson assured that the “positive user experience” would continue to be the top priority.
(nij)
