Amazon Alexa,Amazon Alexa for Kids ,Amazon’s New Alexa for Kids Will Raise Your Child For You
“I love you, Nanny Alexa.”
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Amazon and Photo by Timo Stern on Unsplash.
According to the musical Mary Poppins, the perfect nanny has a cheery disposition, no warts, and plays games, all sorts. You may have noticed there is no rule against her being a robot. Kids, meet your new nanny, Alexa.
On Wednesday, Amazon announced the release of a kids’ version of its artificially intelligent digital assistant Alexa called FreeTime, as well as a kid-friendly model of its Echo smart speaker, called an Echo Dot Kids Edition. This new Echo, which is priced at $79.99 and starts shipping May 9, is basically an Echo Dot mini-speaker wrapped in a colored rubber case and prepackaged to include a one-year subscription to Nanny Alexa.
What does Nanny Alexa do? Whatever parents tell her to, via parental controls. In most instances, this means it will be harder for kids to do things with Alexa like shop or listen to songs with explicit lyrics, and parents can also put a limit on how much kids are allowed to use Alexa. Nanny Alexa has also been engineered to be more attuned to kids’ voices, and will supposedly answer questions differently, with more context and using language that will help children learn manners.
FreeTime comes in two tiers; the unlimited version can be downloaded onto existing Echo devices (though not those with screens) for a monthly subscription fee. There’s also a free version available, which includes some of the same kid-friendly features, but less access to kids’ content like radio stations and audiobooks.
Kids love smart speakers, so introducing a special one for them feels like a smart move for Amazon. But if parents already had doubts about letting their kids befriend an A.I. or allowing a smart speaker into their household, slapping a more colorful case on the Echo is unlikely to assuage their fears. That’s a problem even a spoonful of sugar can’t fix.
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The update comes as Amazon is expanding to woo children as part of smart home push.
Amazon.com's Alexa has a little something to teach your kids about manners. After receiving feedback from some parents concerned about how voice assistants are affecting their kids attitudes, the company updated Alexa to reward children who asks for things nicely.
Kids are some of the biggest fans of voice assistants, with some learning to talk to Alexa, Apple's Siri or Google's Assistant before they can form full sentences. But some parents have worried that having voice assistants around the house will make their children more rude, since the youngsters can bark out demands for a favorite television station or song at any time.
Amazon heard from parents in comments on its products that they wanted a way to teach etiquette while using the voice assistant, the company said in statement. The company then spoke to child development experts about the best way for Alexa to do that.
(Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post.)
The answer they came up with was positive reinforcement. You won't hear Alexa ask, for example, "What's the magic word?" if a child doesn't say "please." Instead, it will thank a child for asking nicely if he or she remembers to slip in that oh-so-important "magic" word.
The update comes as the company is expanding its efforts to woo children as part of their smart home push. Amazon also announced on Wednesday that it's made a child-focused version of its $80 Echo Dot speaker, which have durable, candy-colored cases and that its adding parental controls to the Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Plus to help limit when a child can interact with their technology. Additionally, it's made a new add-on to its Prime membership, which offers more kid-focused content including kid-friendly skills developed by companies such as Disney and Nickelodeon for $2.99 per month.
Children have become a key demographic for Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft as they move deeper into the home with smart speakers and strive to make their particular voice assistant a central part of the household.
Kids are some of the biggest fans of voice assistants, with some learning to talk to Alexa, Apple's Siri or Google's Assistant before they can form full sentences. But some parents have worried that having voice assistants around the house will make their children more rude, since the youngsters can bark out demands for a favorite television station or song at any time.
(Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post.)
The answer they came up with was positive reinforcement. You won't hear Alexa ask, for example, "What's the magic word?" if a child doesn't say "please." Instead, it will thank a child for asking nicely if he or she remembers to slip in that oh-so-important "magic" word.
The update comes as the company is expanding its efforts to woo children as part of their smart home push. Amazon also announced on Wednesday that it's made a child-focused version of its $80 Echo Dot speaker, which have durable, candy-colored cases and that its adding parental controls to the Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Plus to help limit when a child can interact with their technology. Additionally, it's made a new add-on to its Prime membership, which offers more kid-focused content including kid-friendly skills developed by companies such as Disney and Nickelodeon for $2.99 per month.
Children have become a key demographic for Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft as they move deeper into the home with smart speakers and strive to make their particular voice assistant a central part of the household.
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The strategy has raised concerns among some privacy advocates, such as the Center for Digital Democracy, about new avenues for data collection. They hope that companies will continue to respect a child's right to privacy. Children are one of the only groups of people in the U.S. protected by privacy law and Amazon said that it is compliant. Companies have dealt with those limitations by setting different rules to the many voice assistant programs designed for children, requiring parents to sign off on their children using certain apps. But it hasn't slowed down development of those programs.
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