"Alexa, disable the auxiliary laser beam."

On the one hand, you want to turn your house into an intruder-proof Fort Knox. On the other, you don't want to lift a finger to get your home in lockdown mode. Once again, it's Amazon's Alexa voice assistant to the rescue, with new security features to further automate your castle.

If you have an Echo speaker or another Alexa-enabled gadget in your possession, you can now train selected smart home security systems to be activated by your voice.

We're not talking a single Ring doorbell here or outdoor camera there – we're talking the full 'call the SWAT team if a gentle breeze rattles my window' type security systems, the kind that can have a professional installation to cover every part of your home.

Protecting the homestead

Rolling out in the US first, companies like Abode, Honeywell, Ring, ADT, and Scout alarm have already signed on to allow the new Alexa Security Panel Controller framework to interface with their systems, letting users control security features with their voices.

Users will be able to enable or disable alarms, trigger different security settings for when they are indoors, away or sleeping, and check in to make sure nothing untoward is happening.

Amazon is aware that some people may feel that voice control over these elements may be undermining the integrity of the systems. After all, shouting your pin out every time you want to lock up doesn't seem wise. But it's an opt-in option to manually enable disarming systems by voice, and Amazon is implementing a voice pattern recognition code to verify only the right people gain access to your home.

Whether or not you feel that's good enough to defend against a talented impressionist is up to you.

The best smart speakers: which one should you buy?

Speak softly and she’ll whisper right back

Artificially-intelligent digital assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant are slowly but surely taking over the world, appearing in myriad devices ranging from phones to speakers to TVs to cars and, as of last week, even kitchen appliances like microwaves.

If you’re a frequent user of any of the above assistance, though, there’s likely one feature you'll have wished for at various times and in certain situations – the ability for them to be a bit more discrete.

Today, Amazon's provided more details on its plans to address that need by enhancing Alexa's ability to understand whispered speech. The upcoming feature, which was first announced last week alongside the company’s range of new Echo devices, means that when Alexa detects a user whispering, the assistant will automatically voice replies in a lower volume, hushed tone too.

The feature is coming to the US market first and will be available beginning in October.

Learning to listen

According to Zeynab Raeesy, a speech scientist working on Amazon’s Alexa Speech team, “Whispered speech is predominantly unvoiced, meaning that it doesn’t involve the vibration of the vocal cords, and it has less energy in lower frequency bands than ordinary speech.”

That meant that to enable the new capabilities, the team had to make adjustments to the way sound was processed after being captured, and they’re planning to present a paper on their findings at the IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology in December.

With Google, Amazon and Apple all hoping that voice assistants will be a huge market for growth, adding whisper support to speech recognition technologies makes a lot of sense. It gives users the ability to use assistants more discretely and should, theoretically, help people feel more comfortable about using voice control in a much wider range of environments – like when you’re out in public, at the office or school, or perhaps just trying to avoid waking up that sleeping kitty on your lap.

These are the best Alexa Skills and commands

Sweet nothings

Of course, better contextual awareness also has the potential to make AI assistants seem a bit more human, too – although whether you see that as a pro or con will probably depend on your general feeling towards this burgeoning age of artificial intelligence.

I for one welcome our new digital overlords and am fondly looking forward to the day when I can sneak out of bed for a midnight snack, and quietly whisper "Alexa, warm up this slice of chocolate cake” to the microwave while my family remains blissfully none-the-wiser. What a beautiful age we live in.


SOURCE TechRadar:

You could buy a basket of puppies for the price of one $2,899 Aibo

This is the current bleeding edge of technology

Siri-powered smart speaker stumbles