This is a problem that’s likely to become more common as all kinds of companies embrace the concept of “ambient computing” – computing capabilities that move seamlessly between every facet of your life. As you move from your smart home to your smart car, with your smart ear buds in hand, different brands are likely to have their own AI assistants ready to help you. SEE: The 4 best smart hubs: Get smart about home control So in the scenario above, if your teenager turned on their atrocious music with Alexa, you should still be able to say to your Sonos speakers, “Hey Sonos, stop,” and the music should stop. “There are certain things that we believe any voice assistant that’s on a device should be able to control,” Rubenson said. Ambient computing “is a big vision, and we’ve known from the beginning that we can’t achieve it by ourselves,” Rubenson said. “Developers and device makers have always been central to this vision for ambient computing technology and to the growth of Alexa.” SEE: What is cloud computing? Everything you need to know about the cloud explained The stats bear that out: more than 20% of all Alexa interactions involve customers interacting with some third-party skill, Rubenson said. That’s tens of billions of interactions overall. Similarly, in the smart home arena, customers have now connected more than 300 million smart home devices to Alexa. There are now more than one million developers, device makers and brands that are building with Alexa in aggregate, across a broad spectrum of industries, including TV makers, automakers and more. Even brands like Disney are integrating Alexa into their experiences and services.
The Alexa Connect Kit SDK for Matter extends Alexa Connect Kit’s cloud connectivity and managed services to Matter devices. Matter is a communication 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 features 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. Alexa Routines Kit (ARK) helps skill builders offer pre-built routines to their customers when they interact with their skill. For instance, Jaguar Land Rover is using the Alexa routines kit to create a routine they call “Goodnight.” The routine will perform tasks like making sure the vehicle is locked, charged or fueled up and turned on to “Guardian” mode.
