At the moment it is an update that only users in the United States will be able to take advantage of, but as soon as it reaches more countries it will be very important. Or so we think, because from now on Alexa will be able to perform actions without you asking her, all based on your own habits and a higher level of proactivity.
Alexa wins in proactivity
Amazon has enabled a new update for users in the United States for the moment that will make its voice assistant much more proactive on a day-to-day basis. And that is important, because among other things it will allow you to make decisions and carry out certain actions without your having to intervene. Yes, it still sounds like a bad idea, but it's just the opposite as we see it.
Currently, if you are a user of Alexa, you will know that the assistant has been gaining in proactivity. An example is when you ask him for a specific date and he understands that you might be interested in creating a reminder in your calendar, so he proposes it to you. Well, now it will go one step further and thanks to your own habits You will learn until you reach the point where could turn off the lights in the house or interact with other connected devices without being asked.
It would be like that mother or father who comes to your room and if they see that you are doing something where you need more light, they go and turn them on. Or just the opposite, when you've gone to sleep she comes and turns them off. Well, that is what Alexa will do from this new update that Amazon began to deploy.
Permission to act, but not for everything
As is logical, the more things Alexa is capable of doing, the easier it is for it to generate distrust among certain users. For this reason and for what can be intuited on the Amazon support page, this level of proactivity would be configurable and you could decide what kind of actions you would perform or not.
Thus, messes are avoided and if you do not want it to have the freedom to control the lights or any other connected object in the home, you simply indicate it and that's it. Even if you don't want it to make any decisions on its own, you'll still be able to set the behavior.
But if you've been using Alexa for a long time and you're familiar with what it can bring and the level of privacy it offers, chances are you're looking forward to this new feature coming soon. Because being able to forget to ask for certain actions without having to resort to creating routines, etc. it is striking.
More news coming to Alexa
Along with this new way of behaving for Alexa, much more proactive, Amazon has also introduced some extra news. None of them is yet available in Spain, although we believe that only the second is the one that could be of most interest to the majority of users.
The first novelty is a new paid service called Guard Plus and that for $4,99 a month allows you to use Alexa-enabled devices as home monitors. These thanks to their microphones can detect strange sounds and alert emergency services through a staff in charge of doing it on your behalf. Interesting proposal, but to what extent could we trust that some kind of noise caused by yourself occurs and you don't really need that emergency call.
The second novelty is much more attractive for everyone and in particular for users with a connected home that has a good number of devices. And it is that thanks to a new power panel the consumption of each of these devices could be estimated (as long as they are compatible and their manufacturers enable this option). So it would be practical and despite not being exact, it would serve to have an estimate of consumption and avoid the purchase of dedicated devices.
Anyway, Amazon continues to improve Alexa and those of us who use it on a daily basis feel a little envious that these news will first arrive in the United States and not be more global launches.