Alexa Will Read to Your Kids, however There’s a Catch

Amazon has made no secret of creating prospects out of the entire household, together with the youngsters. There are already varied methods to deliver Alexa into your little one’s life, from gadgets like good shows and Fire tablets to abilities that allow every part from video games to homework assist. And now, Amazon has introduced Reading Sidekick, a brand new talent that enables Alexa to learn a e book alongside together with your child and coach them once you’re not obtainable.

Reading Sidekick was designed in the interest of making “reading more fun.” It works best for kids ages 6-9 who still need help parsing sentences and learning pronunciation. Reading Sidekick works with both physical and digital books, provided they’re available in Amazon’s library. You’ll need an Amazon Kids Plus account to activate it, which costs $5 per month without Amazon Prime and $3 with an active subscription. There are more than 700 books available at launch, including recently published titles like Hair Like Mine and long-standing favorites like Chica Chica Boom Boom.

After your kid commands, “Alexa, let’s read,” the assistant will ask the child to say the book title, and then it will queue it up to start. You can choose how much you want Alexa to read along or if it should take turns.

Once your child starts to read, Alexa will listen and respond accordingly. If your child is struggling, Alexa will provide the next word to help them move forward. And when they’re succeeding, Alexa will offer words of encouragement, like, “Amazing job!” and, “Way to stick with it,” which is not something a human would say in this day and age, but maybe this a way to help differentiate Alexa from real people. Alexa will even offer up a “woohoo!” if your kid is nailing the pronunciation of words and managing a healthy pace.

Honestly, the Reading Sidekick sounds like fun—like something I would have taken advantage of when I was a kid reading all by my lonesome. I might even try this out with my daughter once she’s of reading age. It’s an easy way to encourage reading practice when you’re not available, and the fact that it’s an AI assistant is a neat gimmick for keeping a kid entertained.

The Reading Sidekick feature is being released alongside Alexa Voice Profiles for Kids, which will allow parents to opt in for a separate voice profile for up to four children. For a child that relies on constant interaction with the digital assistant, it might be something you consider for the ease of access and built-in parental controls that come with it.

But before you commit, consider how Amazon trained its assistant to make these kid-specific features a reality. As TechCrunch reminded us, Amazon makes use of children’ voice recordings for Alexa’s speech recognition and pure language understanding. In some instances, Amazon manually critiques the voice samples. And that’s how Alexa can perceive accents, lisps, and all of the completely different ways in which a toddler would possibly pronounce a phrase of their early improvement.

If you’re a guardian that’s waffling on the utility of those assistant options, and also you’ve already introduced the gadgets into your house, you may overview easy methods to delete individual voice recordings that includes your little one. You may set it up in order that Alexa routinely deletes recordings after a set time period. The possibility is accessible within the Alexa Privacy dashboard on the cellular app, below More Settings. From there, tick the choice to allow deletion by voice. Then you may choose when and the way typically Amazon ought to filter your voice recordings. I’ve it set in order that it by no means saves my queries. I’ve reached out to Amazon for clarification on whether or not this skill will prolong to Alexa Voice Profiles for Kids.

For anybody pondering of Reading Sidekick as a useful instrument for conserving children engaged via the summer time, the characteristic is now obtainable should you’re an Amazon Kids Plus subscriber. Alexa Voice Profiles for Kids will roll out to everybody by July 2.