These days is held Alexa Live 2022 , the developer conference in which Amazon has announced a series of new features and improvements coming for next year, which on the one hand will make the virtual assistant ( here how to create custom commands ) always more the center of the smart home and on the other hand will strengthen its integration with Matter . As for Matter, the long-awaited home automation standard created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) which now seems to be coming to us, Amazon has announced the arrival of new tools for developers allowing Alexa to manage compatible devices. Matter provides compatibility between smart home devices and the virtual assistant, be it Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or Apple Homekit. By supporting Matter, Alexa will be able to connect to most devices without encountering compatibility issues and users won’t have to worry about anything. All of these improvements and changes will lead users into a much bigger world than they’re used to with Alexa, but seeing the new SDKs and SDKs, Amazon’s commitment seems absolute. We hope that the implementation will live up to expectations and actually result in what users want: simple installation and hassle-free voice control of various devices.
Not only Amazon, but also Google is putting a lot of effort to integrate Matter into Google Assistant, and recently announced the integration and products, so the competition is starting to kick in, understanding that users can theoretically use different virtual assistants in the same house, given Matter’s high degree of interoperability. As for the other novelties of Alexa, they are oriented towards greater autonomy . For example, as part of the new Routines, it will be easier for developers to work on words to say to Alexa. One example is Jaguar’s Alexa skill called ‘Goodnight’, which allows the user to receive updates on their vehicle’s status and charge by triggering a lock and alarm sequence. Alexa will learn on its own whether or not to use this routine and help implement it if necessary. Another example of this functionality is Alexa’s use of other virtual assistants to perform third-party tasks. This new addition is called “Universal Commands”. A new partner, Skullcandy, is implementing this in their headphones by adding Alexa with their virtual assistant, allowing users to wake up Alexa or Skullcandy by saying “Hey, Skullcandy” followed by a command; any virtual assistant capable of handling the command will pick it up and implement the action.
