Hearing Whispers, Cursing, and Broken Glass - Just a Few of Alexa's New Talents

   By SheSpeaksTeam  Oct 01, 2018

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If you’re ready to have one less loud interruption in your life, Alexa’s new whisper upgrade may be just what you’re looking for. Amazon’s smart home helper will soon be able to hear your commands and questions in a quiet whisper and she’ll respond with a whisper as well. Whispering robots may sound a little creepy, but for those of us who still have regular nappers in the house - the new upgrade sounds like a win.

Wired reports about all of Alexa’s new upgrades announced by Amazon and due out later this year. The new quiet feature allows users to activate the whisper mode simply by whispering a question or command to Alexa and she inturn whispers back to you. Aside from Alexa’s new enhanced hearing and voice control, Amazon is also working to make Alexa a better protector of your home while you’re away.

A new feature called Alexa Guard in the works would allow the Echo device to recognize the sound of breaking glass or a smoke alarm going off while you are away. In order to turn on the Alexa Guard feature a user would simply say, “Alexa, I’m going out.” The bot would then listen for any breaking glass or alarms. Upon hearing something suspicious, Alexa is able to record the sound and play it back to you on your phone while you’re out so that you can decide if it is something to address.

And if you didn’t think Alexa was smart enough, she will soon be able to decipher the tone of your voice to know when you sound frustrated. This new emotional awareness may have some of us more alarmed than intrigued since many who have not yet added Alexa to their home have privacy concerns. If Alexa knows everything that makes us upset or frustrated, will Amazon use this information to learn our likes and dislikes in order to sell us more stuff? Werner Goertz, a reserach director from Gartner explains “Privacy concerns have already been a barrier to adoption. The industry’s efforts have not been sufficient to remove this misapprehension.”

Amazon’s team working on Alexa’s new upgrades have not yet said when this paticular upgrade will be ready. They also insist that detecting frustration in a person’s voice will only work to help Alexa learn from her mistakes and better serve us in the home.

What do you think of Alexa’s new upgrades?

Do the new upgrades make you more or less likely to use an Alexa Echo device in your home?