In a new report, a Massachusetts woman is apparently suing Amazon over privacy related issues. The woman is seeking class action status to sue the company on the behalf on recording children’s voices on eight different states. The lawsuit was filed in the federal court on Seattle on the 11th of June. Amazon is being accused of illegally recording children via its Alexa voice assistant. Additionally, the illegal recordings were also being held by the company contributing,” a massive database of billions of voice recordings containing the private details of millions of Americans.”
The woman that filed the case stated that she had bought Amazon Echo [...]
Amazon had unveiled a new category of skill dubbed Cleo for its Indian markets back in 2018. The idea behind Cleo was to improve Alexa’s language model for its Indian users by learning from the customers themselves. The southeastern country is a key region for Amazon Alexa’s global team that is working on drastically improving the user interface.
The company identifying the potential in the market, worked on various regional languages to grow the linguistic capabilities of Amazon Alexa. The voice-based assistant has received a warm welcome in Indian homes with its Echo line up and is still gaining traction in the country. The Indian smart speakers market [...]
The new Amazon Echo Plus (2nd Gen) has been launched and it hosts a lot of improvements over the previous generation. The new improved Echo Plus is different both inside and out. With improved sound quality and some evident design changes, the Echo Plus looks promising, to say the least. Launched at a price of Rs 14,999, we take a look at what it packs inside.
Inside The BoxThe Box houses the device itself, a quick start manual and warranty information. Apart from this, it houses the wall adapter which powers the Echo Plus. The wall adapter has a really long wire, ensuring that you can place the device at a spot of your convenience.
Design ChangesThe [...]
Amazon has launched their most powerful streaming stick in India. It is called the the Fire TV Stick 4K and it comes with the new Alexa Voice Remote. The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K can directly stream content from your Amazon prime video/music account to your big screen television. Certainly, to use the streaming service you must be a subscriber of Amazon prime video which costs Rs 129 per month or Rs 999 for an annual subscription.
As the name suggests, the updated Fire Stick can now stream content upto 4K resolution and other than prime video it can stream content from multiple other content providers. The content providers include ZEE5, hotstar, Netflix, EROS Now, SonyLIV and [...]
Technology is ever evolving and there is no denying that our lives are much easier now. We have technology in everything in our lives and sometimes it is hard to fathom what our lives would be without certain inventions and advancements. Smart home tech is a new arena where big companies like Amazon and Google excel and smart speakers, in particular, have become very popular. One incident in the UK, however, gives us a glimpse of how intrusive technology has become.
The parents of one-year-old Joe conceded that their son’s first word was rather conventional. Us humans emphasise a lot on a kid’s first word and more often than not, it is either “mum” or [...]
Amazon has added another Alexa-powered smart home speaker to its repertoire in India. After launching it in the US in September 2017, the company has now launched the Echo Spot in India. The smart speaker with a display is on sale in India for Rs 12999. However, it is available for Rs 10999 for now, as an introductory offer.
The Amazon Echo Spot is a mix of the Echo Dot and the Echo Spot. The Spot has a 2.5 inch circular display with a resolution of 480 x 480 px. The Echo Spot is like a smart alarm clock powered by Alexa which can also be connected to external speakers via Bluetooth or a 3.5mm headphone jack. This means that users can retail the smart functionality of an Echo [...]
Artificial Intelligence is great. The way it has grown over the years and especially the implementation of it with our smartphones and smart home devices is really impressive. While people joke about how AI is still very robotic and not close to being human-like, Amazon has taken the first step in fixing that. It has announced the launch of a follow-up mode for its voice assistant, Alexa.
Alexa, now present in everything from smartphones to smart speakers, is a great tool for people with smart home devices. However, asking questions to Alexa, or pretty much any AI assistant can be very monotonous and robotic. For every time, you need to say the keyword like “Hey [...]
The Essential Phone had a lot of hype to live up to. It was, after all, created by Andy Rubin, popularly known as the “father of Android.” However, the smartphone was met with heavy criticism for its camera performance, especially at that price point. Over the months, the company reduced the price of the device from US$ 699 to now US$449. It recently launched three new colour variants of the device as well. Now, Essential has announced an Amazon-exclusive Halo Gray colour variant of the device.
Essentail Ph-1
The Halo Gray version of the Essential PH-1 now gets support for Alexa (Amazon’s [...]
Harman International has announced the launch of its new smart speaker, the Harman Kardon Allure in India at a price of Rs. 22,490. The smart speaker will be available exclusively via to Amazon Prime members as of nowThe Alexa powered, Harman Kardon Allure can be controlled via voice commands, much like several other speakers in the market. i.e. Google Home, Amazon Echo etc.
The smart speaker lets you order pizza, play music, read the news, control your smart home appliances, make purchases from Amazon, and much more. Harman Kardon Allure features far-field voice technology which allows the speaker to hear commands even [...]
The holiday season is a time when companies try to push their marquee products into the market to take advantage of an average consumer’s spending spree. Apple Inc however, has decided to evade this season and wait till early next year to launch its much awaited foray into the smart speaker industry. HomePod, the Siri powered smart speaker which was unveiled back in June will start shipping to the US, UK and Australia in only early 2018.
The smart speaker industry has become more competitive this year and launching a first smart speaker at the end of 2017 was already a but late from Apple. Amazon’s Echo lineup and Alphabet Inc’s Google Home speakers have been [...]
It has been a long time but, tech companies have finally taken notice of the ever growing tech consumers in India. After finally launching the Echo smart speaker lineup in India a year after Amazon expanded it to global markets, the company is doing something India-specific with Alexa. Amazon’s AI Alexa, which powers the Echo smart speakers will learn to speak ‘Hinglish’. It is a popular way of speaking in India which is a mix of the Hindi and English languages.
Parag Gupta, Head of Product Management, Amazon India said:
We wanted our devices to talk, walk and feel Indian. Alexa is not a visiting American, she has a very Indian personality.
Tech [...]
The smart speakers market has seen a constant one-on-one between Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home. For a while, Amazon had a US$50 alternative, the Echo Dot to the relatively expensive Echo. On 4th October, Google unveiled a smaller and cheaper alternative to the Google Home, called the Home Mini for a price of US$50. In April of 2017, the Google Home got the ability to recognise different voices in the home and have personalised responses. Amazon has announced that Alexa can do the same thing.
This basically means that if there are three people in the house and you ask Alexa to call a friend, Alexa will look through your profile your contacts by recognising the [...]
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