Amazon’s Alexa and her Echo kids have been showing up in more homes assisting families via voice command, but she doesn’t come with every Alexa skills. You can teach your Alexa with new skills to make her more useful. Alexa Skills are tools developed by companies to help Alexa owners interact seamlessly with their services through set voice commands.
So Many Things to Learn
There are over 25,000 skills available to teach your Alexa, and that number is continuously growing. Keep in mind a lot of these skills are probably ridiculous and useless. Alexa can learn how to play music directly from your favorite streaming services like SiriusXM or any number of weird ambient sounds. There is even an app that makes Alexa play Oscillating Fan noises. You’ll never need a fan ever again! If you are an Alexa owner, you can load yours up with thousands of useless skills. Maybe even a couple useful ones can be added too, like news skills or smart home skills. But really, be honest with yourself, you’re probably going to teach your Alexa fart jokes and fidget spinning.
You Can Be a Teacher Too
Anyone can create a new skill to teach Alexas around the world. Amazon gives you tips and even templates to help you in creating your skill. To create your skill, you need to be able to anticipate what Alexa owners will say and what Alexa will respond with. You could create a skill that makes Alexa forget she is a voice assistant and then freak out about living in a tiny cylinder.
Free to Pay?
So far Alexa skills have been free to teach, but the Jeopardy skill has now added an “in-skill purchase” that allows you to pay $1.99 to have six extra questions each day if you are not a Prime member. I can see this skill platform easily turning into the realm of smartphone apps with in-app purchases that make games significantly easier to play.
