Amazon have launched a voice controlled device called Echo which is designed to sit in your home and listen in on your conversations. You can tell it to do things like play music, tell the time, read the news, read the weather, as well as add items to your shopping list. The device responds to the name “Alexa” and behaves very much like Apple’s Siri voice assistant with the added benefit of being able to build a shopping order with simple voice commands.
The device is being piloted on the West Coast of America for customers of Amazon’s grocery service – Amazon Fresh. The ease at which customers will be able to add items to their shopping basket are what Amazon must be hoping is yet another way to get people to shop more frequently with them. The recent announcement of a software development kit will mean software developers will be able to write extend the Echo’s capabilities.
