WASHINGTON — Alexa just got smarter! American multinational technology company, Amazon, has introduced a new feature called “Adaptive Volume.” It will make Alexa speak louder when it finds that a user is in a noisy environment.
The new feature has been introduced to ensure that a user hears Alexa’s responses over any background noise like the sound of a dishwasher, people talking, or music playing on another device.
“With device status announcements, manufacturers can alert customers when their Smart Home device needs attention or inform them of task progress, differentiating their products,” Amazon said in a blog.
“Manufacturers such as GE Appliances, iRobot, Eufy, Anova, and Samsung are the first to implement device status announcements to make their Alexa-connected devices proactive and helpful to customers.”
“With this new feature, you don’t have to worry about crafting individual device status announcements. Amazon provides pre-built templates to easily construct the right device status announcement,” Amazon said.
The feature is currently available to US customers. Amazon said that a user can activate it by saying, “Alexa, turn on the adaptive volume.”
“Announcements for Smart Home Devices via Alexa enable us to deliver more value to our customers,” says Chris Jones, CTO, iRobot.
“We can let customers know when their Roomba robot vacuum or Braava jet robot mop needs assistance and help the customer take action when they need to. We see this as another step in giving customers greater control over when, where, and how their robots clean, ensuring the job gets done right so customers can focus on more important things.”
However, there is no word on whether the adaptive volume will work in the opposite direction, which means becoming quieter if there is no background noise.
There are other ways to reduce “the volume dynamically— one of them is Whisper Mode, where Alexa will whisper its response if you talk to it quietly. You can activate the mode by asking Alexa to ‘turn on whisper mode’” or another way is to make use of “set volume” feature.
Manufacturers like Anova are also implementing the new interface to inform their customers of cooking progress.
“At Anova, our mission is to make our products accessible, simple, and connected in a meaningful way to our food nerd community,” says Anastasia Plotnikova, Director of Marketing at Anova Culinary.
“Food nerds can now receive announcements of cooking progress on a connected Anova Precision Oven with Alexa when their oven has preheated, the food has reached the target temperature, and even that their food is ready, making it easier than ever to get pro-level results at home.”
(With inputs from ANI)
Edited by Saptak Datta and Praveen Pramod Tewari
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