Amazon's Alexa is a personal assistant capable of doing a lot of things, like music playback and providing weather, traffic, and other real-time information. At this year's CES, a lot of manufacturers are using the voice assistant in their hardware.
According to Time, Alexa showed up in car infotainment systems, new smartphones, robots, lamps, and even laundry machines, even if Amazon did not really officially attend the CES conference. Popular brands like Whirlpool, Lenovo, GE, and Dish, have announced their plan to add the voice-activated helper to their hardware.
Ford Motors has also announced that they have teamed up with Amazon to bring Alexa to Ford models with SYNC feature, The Christian Science Monitor reported. The voice assistant will possibly be available in cars this summer. Ford will likely be the first in the industry with Alexa added to its lineup.
Meanwhile, other companies are trying to keep up with the game. Late last year, Google released a device similar to Amazon's Echo called the Google Home. Some reports say that Apple is also working on an Echo-like device, and Microsoft is planning to bring its Cortana voice agent to Harman Kardon speakers.
Experts feel that Amazon has an edge over Google and other manufacturers because the Echo was launched to the market earlier than Google Home and other similar devices. Also, Amazon isn't partial to a particular platform, unlike Google with Android or Apple with iOS.
Now, talking about Echo, some people are willing to trade privacy for convenience. Once someone utters a keyword like "Alexa", the device shares what it hears with Amazon's servers in order to process a response. Google Home works the same way. The conversations are stored indefinitely, and this process makes some consumers uncomfortable.
"The Echo has to listen to everything. That's kind of disturbing," said Ryan O'Leary, vice president of WhiteHat Security's threat research center. "You're trusting the devices to not do that, but it's entirely possible."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
