Amazon Bringing the ‘Hey Disney!’ Assistant to All Echo Devices

Admit it: your internal little one has at all times wished to speak to Mickey Mouse. Later this 12 months, you’ll have the opportunity to take action via an Amazon Alexa-powered speaker in your house. Disney and Amazon are bringing the “Hey Disney!” voice assistant to extra customers. Right now, it’s solely obtainable in lodge rooms at Disney resorts. But quickly, it’ll be open to anybody with an Echo gadget.

The “Hey Disney!” command makes use of Amazon’s Alexa Custom Assistant (ACA), which Amazon launched about two years in the past in order that corporations might plug in their very own branded assistant alongside Amazon’s signature voice, Alexa. Disney calls their bundle the Disney Magical Companion, and it’s obtainable first in choose lodge rooms on the firm’s Polynesian Village Resort in Florida. It’s additionally slowly rolling out to Disneyland and Disney World motels. Folks with Alexa at house will quickly be capable of work together with “Hey Disney!” through a paid Alexa talent, although the worth has but to be introduced. The Disney assistant will mechanically be unlocked in case you already pay for an Amazon Kids profile.

The voice assistant gives entry to greater than 20 Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars characters. They embrace Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Dory from Finding Nemo, and Olaf from Frozen. You’ll be capable of request jokes, play video games, and hearken to Disney music and sounds.

Visitors accessing “Hey Disney” via Echo Show units which are stationed at Disney resorts can ask questions concerning the parks or request service from the entrance desk. The assistant helps Disney’s wearable, MagicBand+, which has develop into a big a part of the park expertise in recent times. The wearable even lights up in case you set the alarm via the Disney assistant.

Amazon says that whereas utilizing the Disney instructions at your lodge, there isn’t any private data exchanged between you and the gadget. “We designed this as an anonymous experience so that when a customer is interacting, Alexa doesn’t know who is in the room,” mentioned Aaron Rubenson, VP of Alexa, in a video name with Gizmodo. “We don’t need to know that.”

Amazon can be saying a brand new automotive integration at CES 2023. Panasonic Automotive Systems, run by Panasonic, plans to carry simultaneous Alexa and Siri integration in choose vehicles. You’ll be capable of name on Apple’s Siri for iPhone-specific instructions and Amazon’s Alexa for every part else. Like the “Hey Disney” assistant, automobiles enabled with this know-how can discern whether or not you’re commanding Siri or Alexa.

Both of those particular bulletins are supposed to showcase Amazon’s dedication to “ambient intelligence” (Google calls their model of this “ambient computing.”) The concept is that you just stroll from a room into your automotive, and it’s the identical expertise throughout the board with out having to work together with a display or smartphone straight.