At Christmas, Liz Philips and her two sons Sutton, 8, and Greyson, 10, welcomed a new member into their San Diego home
They called her Alexa, and though not a traditional bundle of joy, she was immediately embraced.
Alexa is not a baby. She’s not human. She’s the female persona associated with the Amazon Echo personal assistant.
And, in a bit of a surprise, many regular folks —non-techies — are turning to Alexa for help around the house.
Perhaps it’s because she responds promptly to questions and (unlike your significant other) she’s usually spot on.
Echo is a voice-operated speaker powered by artificial intelligence. Echo comes with “far-field voice recognition,” meaning the device can tap into any of seven different microphones to hear voices coming from any direction across an entire room.
Echo can play music or games, start timers, add items to shopping carts, order groceries, do math equations or look up hours of a local business.
“From the outside, you say, ‘Oh, it’s kind of like Siri or Google Now.’ But, to me, it doesn’t feel like that at all,” Philips said. “It feels much more personal, like a member of a family.”
The Philips kids interact with Echo (which they know only as Alexa) as if talking with an inanimate gadget masquerading as a woman is a natural.
“I like playing the animal game with her,” Greyson said. “We think of an animal, and she asks us questions … she usually (guesses the animal) in 14 questions.”
Sutton too likes to play games and music, but also uses Echo for help with homework, say when he can’t spell “Mississippi.” Alexa to the rescue.
“The Echo is really Amazon’s way to become the node for ambiently interacting with the Web in the house,” eMarketer analyst Yory Wurmser said.
In other words, Echo is a search engine or online shop that’s taken on a different, slightly more human form.
Conditioning internet habits
So, the Philips home represents the coming-soon American household, where kids and adults take a no-hands approach to internet services.
And Amazon, which profits from conditioning people to blindly reorder home essentials or buy music, is leading the charge.
Though Amazon doesn’t release sales figures, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners recently pegged U.S. Echo sales at 3 million devices, a pretty impressive figure given that Echo, which retails for $180, has only been available to the general public since June 2015. Less than a year since its official coming out, people are shucking an I-don’t-need-that-contraption attitude as they come to terms with its utility.
Out of the box, the Echo handles basic commands: It can tell you the weather, respond to queries, stream music, update sports scores and report on traffic for your daily commute.
The device, however, has the ability to learn “skills,” or extra actions programmed by third-party developers. Like Google and Apple, Amazon encourages others to create the equivalent of Echo apps, so users can do more with the odd-looking doodad.
So, Echo owners now have access to hundreds of skills, so they can ask Alexa to order a pizza from Domino’s or request an Uber ride. Sophisticated users even connect Echo to their lights, garage doors and thermostats using it as a home command center.
These fancy extras don’t seem to be the basic reason behind Echo’s household takeover.
“Mostly the boring stuff is what I really like,” Philips said. “[It’s] gimicky stuff that gets people excited about her, but we don’t use that every day.”
By boring, Philips means practical.
Her boys keep her two hands occupied most of the time, which means anything she can accomplish with just her voice is a small victory.
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