Alexa’s Newest Skill? Sending Users Notifications

It looks like Alexa has developed a new skill — as of today, Amazon will announce that its virtual personal assistant will be able to deliver notifications.

“Soon customers will be able to enable notifications for select skills and Amazon.com shopping updates on most devices with Alexa,” Amazon’s David Isbitski posted to the Alexa Blog this morning. “Companies like AccuWeather, The Washington Post, Just Eat, and Life360 will be among the first to update their skills with notifications, giving Alexa the capability to alert customers with information that’s important to them.”

As of today, Alexa currently has over 12,000 skills (and counting — the AI adds about 1,000 new skills per month) which include things like smart home management, starting a car or checking a bank balance.

The new notification skill is designed to run a bit differently than the screen-based version one sees on a phone — and is meant to be more easily user-directed.

“Users will be able to opt-in to notifications per skill using the Amazon Alexa App and will be alerted when there’s new information to retrieve by a chime and a pulsing green light on their Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show device,” Isbitski writes. “When users enable notifications on a skill like The Washington Post, the skill will send status updates to the device. Users can simply ask, ‘Alexa, what did I miss?’ or ‘Alexa, what are my notifications?’ and Alexa will inform users of the latest breaking news.”

Said more simply — Alexa won’t just start chatting away for no reason. Additionally, notifications that are no longer wanted can be cancelled, and Alexa can also be put into do-not-disturb mode so you can enjoy an interruption-free evening.

The implementation will be available for developers in the next few weeks, but the actual roll-out could be as much as a few months away.