Amazon just announced a new feature which lets you protect your homes. However, this new Amazon Alexa feature does this when you are not at home. This newly launched feature is Amazon Alexa Guard which will be available to all Amazon Echo customers in the US. With this, you can not only use your Amazon Echo as a smart speaker but also double it as a home security device.
Now, you just have to notify Amazon Alexa that you are leaving the house. For this, you just have to say “Alexa, I am leaving”. This will make the Echo device start listening. After this, a feature called “Smart Alerts” will be activated.
With Smart Alerts, you will get important notifications for any sound that Echo detects. For example, the sound of breaking of glass and smoke or carbon monoxide alarms. Once you receive the notification, you will get to know what is happening at your home.
On top of the notification, you will also get an audio recording of what Alexa heard so you can also hear the same. If you feel that the sound is not important then you can just ignore it as well. Also, it highlights the fact that Amazon Echo’s speakers are designed to be always listening to your conversations.
There was a recent controversy when Amazon Echo workers were said to be listening to all the conversations done on Echo devices worldwide. As part of the Amazon Echo Alexa Guard training, Amazon hired licensed contractors and made them break hundreds of different glass windows. This way, the Alexa Guard would get to know the breaking of the different sounds a glass makes and when to give the notifications.
Now, the Amazon Echo Alexa Guard is a new app which is rolling out for free to all Echo owners in the US right now. We don’t know if the Amazon Echo Alexa Guard will come to other parts of the world.