Interesting Facts About Alexa You Should Know

Amazon’s artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant has created a lot of buzz on the Internet. Let’s have a look at 30+ interesting Facts about Alexa. Alexa, developed by Amazon first ran on Amazon Echo smart speaker, Amazon Dot, and the Amazon Studio. With Alexa, you can build natural voice experiences that offer customers a more intuitive way to interact with the technology they use every day.

Interesting Facts About Alexa

1. Alexa is an artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant technology developed by Amazon.
2. Alexa supports different operating systems, like Fire OS, iOS, and Android.
3. Most devices with Alexa allow users to activate the device using a wake-word (such as Alexa or Amazon).
4. As of November 2018, Amazon had more than 10,000 employees working on Alexa and related products.
5. In 2019, Amazon has sold more than 100 million devices with its Alexa smart assistant built-in.
6. You can build different things with Alexa. Like, Alexa Skills, Alexa Devices, Enterprise Solutions.
7. Alexa is a project inspired by Star Trek. Alexa was inspired by the computer voice and conversational system onboard the Starship Enterprise in science fiction TV series and movies.
8. This artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant was named Alexa because it has a hard consonant with the X, which helps it be recognized with higher precision.
9. In June 2015, Amazon announced the Alexa Fund, a program that would invest in companies making voice control skills and technologies.
10. Since 2015, the Alexa Fund has invested in companies that are innovating in AI, voice technology, frontier tech, robotics, etc.
11. The Alexa Fund provides up to $200 million in venture capital funding to fuel voice technology innovation. Amazon believes experiences designed around the human voice will fundamentally improve the way people use technology.
12. In 2018, Amazon partnered with Lennar to include the voice-activated technology in all their new homes, to create “Experience Centers” in their model homes that will allow customers to interact with the suite of Amazon devices — including Dash buttons, Alexa, and Echo — in a more natural living environment.
13. Amazon’s Alexa is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, sports, and news. 
14. Alexa also possesses the capability of controlling several smart devices using itself as a home automation system.
15. The Alexa capabilities can be extended by installing “Alexa Skills”. It’s like an addon.
16. Alexa Skills are like apps for Alexa and provide a new channel for your content and services.
17. Alexa Skills let customers use their voices to perform everyday tasks like checking the news, listening to music, playing a game, and more.
18. The Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) provides self-service APIs and tools that you can use to build Alexa skills.
19. With Alexa Skills you can, allow customers to use their voices to easily access your content, devices, and services—wherever they are and whatever they’re doing. It is extremely cool and delightful.
20. Amazon Alexa self-service APIs and tools enable to deliver experiences in gaming, productivity, news, music, and smart home.
21. By using the voice you can reach through the millions of devices running Alexa around the world. You can enjoy the economic benefits by selling premium services and actual goods.
22. With the Alexa Skills, you can deliver voice experiences in more than 20 different categories, from education, audio, travel to entertainment.
23. You can also create multimodal skills that integrate voice, visuals, and touch and offer premium content in your skills.
24. With Alexa Skills you can create amazing voice games. These Voice games will give customers an entirely new way to play games—including interactive adventures, family-friendly games, and quiz games.
25. You can build a game skill for Alexa to reach customers through hundreds of millions of Alexa devices and drive player awareness and engagement of your games.
26. You can build visually impressive and animated Alexa games with existing web technologies such as HTML5 using the Alexa Web API for Games. HTML, CSS, JavaScript is the best blend of client-side scripting languages that will perfectly shape the Alexa Web API. By using Web Audio with HTML5, CSS, JavaScript you can build soul-satisfying applications.
27. When Amazon was testing what would eventually become Alexa, some workers and even the company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, were frustrated with its performance, according to a new book about the business.
28. Bezos tested an Alexa-powered device – a project referred to as the “Doppler” – at his home in Seattle. “In pique of frustration over its lack of comprehension, he told Alexa to go ‘shoot yourself in the head,'” Brad Stone wrote in his book “Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire” Source
29. The intelligent Alexa once was a piece of a dumb crack-head. A lot of Amazon developers, employees tested the device and complained of a lack of intelligence. And, because of the same reason, ‘Frustrated’ Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos Once Told Alexa To ‘shoot Yourself In The Head’
30. As Amazon Alexa statistics 2020, 53.6 million Amazon Echo speakers were sold in the same year. The number is expected to rise to 65 million in 2021. Source