Amazon will begin rolling out its revamped voice assistant, Alexa, in Conversation Mode, the latest innovation unveiled at its Autumn 2020 hardware event that will allow a group of people to communicate back-and-forth with Alexa without having to repeat the wake word repetitively.
Conversation mode is an opt-in feature, and is activated with the words “Alexa, join this conversation.” Anyone in the room can talk to the voice assistant, as long as they look at the screen and the smart display camera can capture them.
On the other hand, saying “leave this conversation,” or turning off the microphone or camera will end conversation mode. In addition, Alexa will also be turned off during conversation mode if there has been no interaction for a long time. In addition, Alexa will pause in conversation mode when it is interrupted.
There are visual indicators that indicate that conversation mode is being used. Users see a blue border around the screen and a light blue bar at the bottom when Echo Show sends 10 requests to the cloud. No videos or images are uploaded, and users can check and delete voice recordings via the Alexa app.
This latest change to Amazon’s voice assistant is based on features Amazon has added to make Alexa sound more human, including breathing, changing speech tones and the ability to accent certain words.
The AI of Conversation Mode detects when someone says something to Echo Show 10 based on visual and acoustic cues. Alexa then formulates a response according to the context.
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