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Its been less than a month since Blink, Amazons other security camera company, released the Outdoor 4. Now, as part of Amazons big September product showcase, were getting a trio of accessories to help the camera travel further and do more when it gets there. First on the list is the Sync Module Pro, which lets you place your Outdoor 4 further from your homes wireless network. The company says you can install a camera in the furthest corner of your property without worrying about range, but hasnt yet shared real-world measurements. Maybe those figures havent been finalized yet, since the hardware isnt expected to be available until the start of 2024, when itll cost you $50. Theres a new floodlight mount for the Outdoor 4 that, much like its predecessor, will enable you to temporarily banish the darkness with some motion-activated LEDs. Blink says itll last for two years on a charge, based on default settings which youll probably want to change. Thats available for pre-order today, priced at $160, with shipping due to start on October 17. Blink And to round off the trio, theres a new battery pack that, Blink says, will double the Outdoor 4s life on a single charge. With more power, you can also be a bit less frugal about the notifications you can set up, letting you talk more, record more and generally have a better experience overall. The price for such freedom is $30, and will also begin shipping on October 17. Follow all of the news live from Amazons 2023 Devices event right here.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/blinks-new-outdoor-4-camera-accessories-include-battery-and-range-extenders-160101967.html?src=rss
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Amazon announced a new personal safety feature on Wednesday for Alexa devices. Building on the existing Alexa Guard, Emergency Assist sounds a bit like Life Alert for Echo devices. It allows people in trouble to call for assistance by saying, Alexa, call for help. Alexa Emergency Assist can connect you with a dedicated, professionally trained agent available 24/7. When you sign up, it will save information like your home address, medications and allergies (along with the device youre using) to pass it to first responders. That way, you dont need to repeat it during the call. Amazon says the feature is coming soon in the US, and it will support all Echo devices. It will cost $6 monthly or $59 annually when it launches. Follow all of the news live from Amazons 2023 Devices event right here.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/alexa-emergency-assist-can-call-first-responders-from-your-echo-speaker-155415273.html?src=rss
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After spending a chunk of its event today talking about Alexa upgrades, Amazon announced two new accessibility features coming to its devices later this year. First is Eye Gaze on Alexa, which will let those with mobility or speech disabilities use their gaze to perform a set of preset actions on the Fire Max 11 tablet. This is the first time Amazon is working on gaze-based navigation of its devices, and it will use the camera on the Max 11 to keep track of where a user is looking. The preset actions include smart home controls, media playback and making calls. Eye Gaze will be available on the Max 11 later this year at no additional cost. The company said during its event that this is "still day one for this technology we're very excited about its potential." More details on how Eye Gaze actually works are not available yet. Amazon is also adding a new Call Translation feature that will transcribe Alexa calls on Echo Show devices and display onscreen captions. It can convert them into over 10 languages including English, French, Spanish and Portuguese and will launch later this year on Echo Show devices and the Alexa app for those in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Call captioning is also being expanded to Europe. Follow all of the news live from Amazons 2023 Devices event right here.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-debuts-eye-gaze-accessibility-features-on-the-fire-max-11-tablet-154042714.html?src=rss
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Amazon's Alexa is set to receive a major upgrade that will bring its conversational capabilities more in line with modern chatbots like Google Bard or OpenAI's ChatGPT, David Limp SVP of Amazon Devices & Services, announced during the company's 2023 Devices event on Wednesday. The long running digital assistant will soon be driven by a purpose-built large language model that will be available in nearly every new Echo device. Our latest model has been specifically optimized for voice," Limp told the assembled crowd, "and the things we know our customers love like having access to real-time information, efficiently controlling their smart home, and getting the most out of their home entertainment. Amazon is itself no stranger to genAI technology, having spent more than a decade researching its "ambient intelligence" systems. Generative AI models, specifically Alexa Teacher, have long driven the background functions of Alexa devices. "With generative AI within reach, we started doubling down on the home about nine years ago, and we had an epiphany, " Limp said. "We realized that all the investments in the R&D in the consumer electronics industry was being funneled into mobile phones. The SOCs, the displays, the chip sets, the sensors it was be optimized to the phone." "That was understandable," he conceded. "It's a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. But at the same time, the place where you spend the vast majority of your life your home was virtually forgotten." The new model will be both "larger and more generalized," Limp said, and will "help us take the next steps towards a remarkably different customer experience." To that end, Amazon set out to design the LLM based on five foundational capabilities and then tune the model specifically for voice applications rather than mobile screens. 1. Conversational: Weve studied what it takes to make a great conversation over the past nine years. Its not just words; its body language, its understanding who youre addressing, its eye contact and gestures. 2. Real-world applications: Alexa lives in the real world, not in the tab of your browser. And one of the unsolved challenges of these LLMs is how they interact with APIs and do the right thing. 3. Personalization: LLM in the home has to be personalized to you and your family. 4. Personality: Weve always said that the most boring dinner party is one where nobody has any opinions, and Alexa, powered by this LLM, will have opinionsand it will definitely still have the jokes and Easter eggs youve come to love from Alexa. 5. Trust: To build an AI that will fulfill its promise, we need both trustworthiness and performance. I have one of the most Alexa-fied houses out there, and I would not bring anything into my home that I felt compromised my familys privacy. The voice optimizations simply mean that you won't have to repeat Alexa every time you talk to it. Customers enrolled in the company's Visual ID system will just need to face the screen before they start talking. What's more, the new Alexa will be more forgiving of stumbling or pause-filled speech, and it will soon modulate its tone and emotion based on the context of the conversation. Limp tried to show off those natural conversation capabilities during an on-stage demonstration Wednesday, however the Alexa was not particularly cooperative, patently ignoring two of Limp's spoken prompts which required him to sheepishly repeat himself. The new model is far from Amazon's only genAI project. The company recently released a generative model to help its e-commerce sellers write product listings as well as incorporated a slew of AI-based features into its Thursday Night Football broadcasts at the start of the NFL season. The online seller has also weathered criticism from the Writers Guild of America over the retailer's allowance of AI-generated book listings which infringe heavily upon copyrighted works (and occasionally recommend eating suspect mushrooms). As Limp announced onsage, the new LLM will be available to existing Echo owners as part of a free preview on the devices they already own as well on every new Echo device sold, starting in 2024. This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. Follow all of the news live from Amazons 2023 Devices event right here.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-alexa-is-evolving-into-a-chatbot-for-your-home-152654742.html?src=rss
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Amazon debuted an updated Echo Show 8 during its annual fall event on Wednesday, highlighting the device's new display, camera, microphones and spatial-audio capabilities. Generative AI helps the Echo Show 8 respond dynamically to the user's position in the physical world, offering different displays depending on how far away someone is from the screen. A new language model increases the device's on-board Alexa response time by 40 percent over the previous edition. The Echo Show 8 costs $149.99 and is available for pre-order now, and will start shipping in October. In its keynote, Amazon showed off the new display's dynamic UI in a demo involving the weather app the Echo Show 8 showed a larger font size when the user was far away from the screen, and switched to a more detailed view as they came closer. This is similar to the proximity features Google builds into its Nest Hub devices. Amazon The Echo Show 8 also uses a new large language model that's designed to make interacting with the Alexa assistant feel more conversational. Users won't have to use the wake word over and over again in order to ask the device questions, for instance. Amazon unveiled the original, 7-inch Echo Show in 2017 and has rolled out various versions over the years, with the latest notable refreshes landing in 2021. That year, Amazon announced the third-gen Echo Show 10, the second-gen Echo Show 5 and Echo Show 8, and the brand-new Echo Show 15, which is designed to be wall-mounted. Amazon did release an updated Echo Show 5 in 2023, offering minimal improvements in processing speed and audio quality, but otherwise leaving the device's design unchanged. Follow all of the news live from Amazons 2023 Devices event right here.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-echo-show-8-offers-spatial-audio-and-a-dynamic-proximity-based-ui-151425369.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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