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470143-amazon-echo-alexa

Amazon'southward Alexa banana platform started as the basis for the Echo speaker several years ago. While the utility of such a device was questionable at first, Amazon has attracted scores of developers to the Alexa platform and built the assistant into multiple successful devices. Now, the company may exist trying to cram Alexa into its nearly ambitious form factor yet: smart glasses.

Google famously failed to make Google Glass anything more than a curiosity during its multi-year beta test. The visitor finally stepped back from Drinking glass in 2015, but Amazon is reportedly exploring a unlike avenue. Co-ordinate to an investigation past the Financial Times, Amazon is building the glasses only to firm Alexa'south sound capabilities. The Echo Evidence recently brought a basic UI to Alexa, but that'southward not part of the vesture project. Users would be able to call upward Alexa at whatsoever fourth dimension past speaking 1 of Amazon's pre-defined wake words.

Amazon's smart glasses are intended as a way to interact with Alexa free of wires wherever you are. The glasses are said to use bone conduction to transmit sound, and so you don't even need earbuds plugged in. This untethers Alexa from stationary speakers, where it is almost ofttimes accessed right at present. There's an Alexa app congenital into several smartphones, but information technology lacks the sort of deep integration Assistant has in Android and Siri has on the iPhone. Amazon's Fire HD tablets with Alexa don't accomplish the goal either, every bit they're far from pocketable devices.

Y'all will still demand a smartphone to utilize Amazon'south Alexa spectacles, according to the FT report. Like other wearables, the glasses would connect to your phone over Bluetooth to connect to the cyberspace. Unlike Google Glass, Amazon'south Alexa glasses are designed to look like a regular pair of glasses that no i would expect to house a virtual banana. Presumably, Amazon's glasses could be fitted with prescription lenses for those who demand them. There'south too no photographic camera expected on Amazon's glasses, which was cited equally a privacy concern for Google Glass. The microphone used to trigger Alexa might still brand some consumers wary of potential snooping, though.

The report does not contain a release timeframe for the smart spectacles, merely it does note Amazon has been working on the project for some time already. If they really are equally unobtrusive as claimed, there could be Amazon workers walking around with Alexa-powered glasses right now, and nosotros wouldn't know.