Amazon’s Alexa Trades “I Don’t Know” For Third-Party Recommendations
Currently a limited feature – though confirmed for further scope – Amazon’s Alexa may start recommending third-party skills in lieu of the standard “Hmmmm. I don’t know that”.
Featured in Voicebot’s video below, Alexa can clearly be heard recommending a non-Amazon skill when queried about Apple’s share prices. After Alexa queried if the user wanted to utilise a skill to answer his share price question, Alexa went straight to a general list of prices instead of directly answering the original question.
The video does demonstrate that this new behaviour is still a work in progress, however, it’s useful to know that if Alexa isn’t able to determine what a user wants, it’s able to find a relevant appropriate skill to assist – preventing the user from having to manually select the skill themselves.
Speaking of Alexa’s new behaviour and future scope, Amazon states:
“In limited scenarios, Alexa will suggest skills that may be helpful to answer a customer’s question. We are excited for this feature to roll out to more customers over time to help them discover new skills and get information through Alexa”.
Alexa’s rival, Google Assistant, can already recommend apps to individuals when app developers inform Google what type of actions it can handle.