‘Mail-order bride’ does it all without complaint

ANY working woman (and possibly working man) would benefit from a stay-at-home wife who organises domestic life without making a single demand.

Enter the next generation of smart-er home devices: Amazon Echo and Google Home.

They are powered by the artificial-intelligence personal assistants Alexa (for Echo) and Assistant (for Google).

Alexa and Assistant let their owners access hundreds of apps, services, appliances and the net easily with voice commands. They are the mother ship, the command centre.

Need the aircon turned up or the lights switched off? Ask. Want to set a timer to roast your chicken? Give the order. Need to add milk to the shopping list? Just say so. Want to listen to that Pink Floyd song which goes something like “Da, da, dum di dah tell/heaven from hell?” Home will find and play it .

Echo, which was launched in 2014, gives slicker access to appliances than Home, which was released in November last year — but Home has unrivalled search power.

These “smart speakers with skills” are likely to be the next way in which people engage with technology.

This pair of AI assistants are so friendly and intuitive that Alexa has received more than 250 000 marriage proposals in two years of customer feedback, according to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

“Alexa may be Amazon’s mostloved invention yet,” he said.

The sci-fi movie Her, in which a writer, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with the operating system designed to respond to his needs, may be a glimpse into the not-so-distant future.

Amazon spokeswoman Kinley Pearsall said Alexa and Amazon Echo were only available in the US, UK, Germany and Austria for now, but “the internationalisation of all our products is very important”.

But if you can’t wait, you could try to import this unique mailorder bride.

❛ Alexa has received more than 250 000 marriage proposals in two years