‘Alexa, help me make my kid more polite’
NEW YORK — Alexa’s new missions: encourage kids to ask questions more politely, and get them to bed on time.
The voice assistant that lives inside Amazon’s Echo speakers will soon thank kids for shouting out questions “nicely” if they say “please.” The new response is part of a kid-friendly update that’s coming next month, giving parents more control over the voice assistant. Adults can set Alexa to go silent at bedtime, block music with explicit lyrics and even call kids down to dinner.
“Gone are the days of shouting up the stairs,” Amazon said in a statement Wednesday.
Amazon also will sell an $80 Echo Dot aimed at kids that comes with colorful cases and a 2-year warranty, promising to replace the device if it breaks. Echo Dots typically sell for $50. Amazon hopes its new etiquette software is appreciated by parents and that its new version of the Echo Dot appeals to kids.
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.
Amazon’s hope is that the changes will get more parents to put Echo speakers in their children’s bedrooms. Amazon and others have targeted kids before to cultivate the next generation
of customers: Amazon has sold kid-friendly tablets for years, and Fitbit will soon start selling activity trackers for 8-year-olds and older.
Seattle-based Amazon. com Inc. said the free updated software, called FreeTime, will start to roll out May 9.
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.
The new strategy has raised concerns among some privacy advocates 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 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.