Imagine coming home from work and loud, unpleasant music is coming from your living room speakers. You might know which member of your family turned it on, but you might not know which voice assistant they used to do it: Amazon Alexa, Sonos Voice Control, or Hey Spotify?
It’s a problem that is likely to become more common as all kinds of businesses embrace the concept of ambient computing, i.e. computing capabilities that move seamlessly between all facets of your life. . As you move from your smart home to your smart car, with your smart headphones in hand, different brands are likely to have their own AI assistants ready to help.
“We’re really starting to see this vision for Alexa and ambient intelligence becoming a reality,” Aaron Rubenson, VP of Alexa Voice & Amazon Alexa Skills. “I would say every brand needs to have an ambient strategy at this point.”
Universal commands
Amazon is fully aware, however, that it could get confusing to have so many voice assistants at your disposal. During its Alexa Live for developers event on Wednesday, the company said it was introducing support for what it calls Universal Device Commands, which cover basic commands for a device — like adjusting volume, stopping a timer going off, or stopping an audio stream.
So in the scenario above, if your teenager turned on their awful music with Alexa, you should still be able to tell your Sonos speakers, “Hey Sonos, stop,” and the music should stop.
“There are certain things that we think any voice assistant on a device should be able to control,” said Aaron Rubenson.
Amazon and ambient computing
The introduction of Universal Device Commands builds on the collaborative approach to ambient computing that Amazon has taken in recent years. In 2019, the company launched the Voice Interoperability Initiative to ensure users could interact with more than one voice assistant on a single device.
The initiative was launched with the cooperation of 35 companies, and it now has more than 90. Notably, Apple, Google and Samsung are not part of the initiative. When asked if these three big companies would support the proposed universal commands for the devices, Aaron Rubenson replied that Amazon could not yet share details about compatible voice services outside of Alexa. More information on the implementation of Universal Device Controls is expected to become available over the next year.
Ambient computing “is a big vision, and we’ve known all along that we can’t achieve it on our own,” said Aaron Rubenson. “Developers and device makers have always been at the heart of this vision for ambient computing technology and the growth of Alexa. »
Other announcements
The stats back it up: More than 20% of all interactions with Alexa involve customers interacting with a third-party skill, said Aaron Rubenson. This represents tens of billions of interactions in total. Similarly, in the smart home space, customers have connected over 300 million smart home devices to Alexa.
There are now over a million developers, device makers, and brands building with Alexa overall, across a wide range of industries, including TV makers, automakers, and more. Even brands like Disney are integrating Alexa into their experiences and services.
Meanwhile, during Wednesday’s Alexa Live event, Amazon announced a series of new and improved dev kits that should keep Alexa users’ momentum going:
- The Alexa Connect Kit for Matter SDK extends Alexa Connect Kit’s cloud connectivity and managed services to Matter devices. Matter is a communications standard aimed at promoting interoperability between IoT devices.
- Alexa Ambient Home Dev Kit includes a new collection of APIs and services to extend a variety of Alexa smart home functions to developers. This should provide a more unified smart home experience for end users.
- Alexa Voice Service (AVS) SDK 3.0 combines the Alexa Smart Screen SDK and the AVS Device SDK. This should streamline the development of voice and multimodal experiences.
- The Alexa Routines Kit (ARK) helps skill creators provide pre-made routines to their clients when interacting with their skill. For example, Jaguar Land Rover uses the Alexa Routines Kit to create a routine called “Goodnight”. The routine will perform tasks like making sure the vehicle is locked, charged or fueled, and turned on in “Guardian” mode.
Amazon also announced various ways to help developers promote their skills and grow their businesses:
- The Skill Developer Accelerator Program (SDAP) provides developers with updated incentives and new benefits to help improve skill quality, discovery, and engagement.
- The Promoted Skills feature allows skill creators to run paid campaigns to promote their skills.
- The Alexa Shopping Kit is a suite of features that allows skill builders to embed shopping experiences into their skills. Customers can discover, search and buy relevant products.
- Increased revenue share: For developers who earn less than $1 million per year in cumulative annual revenue from skill purchases (ISP), subscriptions, and paid skills, Amazon is increasing the base revenue share by 70 -30 to 80-20, 80% going to developers. In addition, these developers will also receive 10% of the earnings from their skills as an additional incentive for upgrading. This bonus will be paid in cash in 2022.