William Tunstall-Pedoe founded voice assistant startup Evi which was acquired by Amazon and was then a key member of the team that defined, built and launched Alexa.

Tunstall-Pedoe said his Cambridge- and London-based company, Unlikely AI, needed the money to start hiring developers of a new type of artificial-intelligence software.

Amadeus Capital Partners, Octopus Ventures and Patrick Pichette, the former chief financial officer of Google, and current Twitter board member, are among the backers of the startup.

Amazon’s Echo devices incorporate technology Tunstall-Pedoe helped develop at Evi, a British startup the world’s biggest retailer acquired in 2012.

Back in the day Evi’s voice-activated search app was among the strongest competitors to Apple’s infant Siri.

Amazon Alexa, also known simply as Alexa, is a virtual assistant technology primarily based on a Polish speech synthesiser named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. But back then, did they consider the people named Alexa?

New parents named their newborn daughter Alexa by pure coincidence, just as Amazon’s Alexa devices were entering the tech market.

This would cause a whole world of pain, for now, a six-year-old girl, where the teasing has led the parents to change the Child’s name by deed poll.

As the devices’ popularity grew, the girl from Goettingen in Germany suffered throughout kindergarten and in the playground as other kids made cruel gags at her expense.

Eventually, the constant ridicule got too much for little Alexa, and her parents finally applied to city officials in Goettingen to officially change her name.

Read the full article in the New York Post.

With the Google Nest skill for Amazon Alexa, you can do things like:

• Tell Alexa to change the temperature of your home.
• Show your Nest camera’s live view on Alexa devices with a display.
• Get notified when someone rings the doorbell.
• Talk to a visitor through your doorbell.
• Have Alexa announce when your doorbell or camera detects motion.

The Google Nest skill for Amazon Alexa supports the following Nest devices:

• Nest cameras and doorbells
• Nest thermostats
  
  Here are the steps required.

Amazon has long championed the idea of running multiple voice assistants on the same device. Now, it wants to help those assistants work together. To that end, Amazon is rolling out what it’s calling Universal Device Commands over the next year, the company announced at its Alexa Live developer event on Wednesday. The new feature will make it possible to use core smart speaker functionality across multiple assistants.

“Customers win when they have choice,” said Alexa Voice Service VP Aaron Rubenson.

>> Alexa supports more smart devices than Google Assistant

>> Alexa links to Audible and IFTTT (If This Then That), which expands the scope of the automation you can create. 

>> Alexa vs Google Assistant: Music and video are evenly matched though Google Assistant support YouTube more easily

>> Both Alexa and Google Assistant can create multi-room audio systems

>> In the US, Alexa can also make Zoom video calls on the Amazon Echo Show 8 and Amazon Echo Show 10 smart displays.  So we can look forward to that.

>> Alexa vs Google Assistant: Directions Currently, Google Assistant is better integrated into public transport.

Read more of the verdict here on Tech Radar.

Amazon scientists could summon Grandma’s voice with just a one-minute audio sample.

As first reported by Bloomberg analyst Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter(opens in new tab), the tech giant is supposedly working on “at least four” new smart home products – with a HomePod 2, an updated HomePod mini and several never-before-seen devices expected to be among that number. 

Read more about it on Techradar.

To enable Brief Mode, go to Settings in your Alexa app. Under Alexa Preferences, tap on Voice Responses. From here, you can enable Brief Mode.

Most people prefer shorter responses, but if you find them too brief, you can always disable the feature and go back to the longer responses.

Read about more things you can disable here on makeusof.

Customers in the UK can now try a new wake word for their Echo devices – “Ziggy”. “Ziggy” is the fifth wake word option for Echo devices in addition to “Alexa”, “Amazon”, “Computer”, and “Echo”.

Customers can change the wake word of their Echo device customers via the Alexa app or the Settings screen on Echo Show devices, and all wake word options can be used with either the male or female voice options for Alexa. To change Alexa’s voice, customers need to say ‘’Alexa, change your voice’’.

“We are constantly looking for ways to offer our customers more choices so they can personalise their Alexa experience,” said Dennis Stansbury, Alexa UK Country Manager. “The wake word is crucial as Alexa devices are specially designed only to detect the user’s chosen wake word.

Aug 5 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) will acquire iRobot Corp (IRBT.O), maker of the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba, in an all-cash deal for about $1.7 billion in the latest push by the world’s largest online retailer to expand its stable of smart home devices.

Amazon will pay $61 per share, valuing iRobot at a premium of 22% to the stock’s last closing price of $49.99.

Interpret’s Smart Home Matrix research across 15 nations shows strong, smart home product adoption growth in Western Europe. Reflecting a similar trend seen in the US, first and second-time purchases of smart home products increased over the past year – likely a result of increased investment in the home that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic.