Mumbai: Artificial Intelligence (AI) was at the fore even as Amazon’s “Alexa” with its Echo smart speakers celebrated its sixth anniversary of launch with the knowledge that it has succeeded in reaching out successfully to the younger generation, while literally taking the load off the older generation including parents and others.
“Parents often tell us how Alexa has become a companion in their parenting journeys through options in accessing numerous child-friendly experiences with simple voice commands,” said Dilip R S, Director and Country Manager for Alexa, Amazon India.
Amazon stated that ‘Alexa’ was more popular with kids under 8 years and one child even managed to use its help in “grilling” chicken successfully on his own for his consumption.
Describing a 15% increase over weekends in kids’ music requests alongside nursery rhymes, he said 2023 witnessed kids asking Alexa for children’s stories on an average of 34 times every hour. Parents too benefitted in using Alexa in juggling numerous tasks including controlling their home appliances or even asking for narration of a ‘bedtime story’ for the children.
An Amazon study among 750+ parents across metros and non-metro cities across India revealed that “Alexa helped in reducing screen time for kids while enabling their learning in a fun and engaging manner. 90% parents felt Alexa helped the kids in staying mentally active, learning new things by encouraging curiousity and becoming more independent.
Malvika Jethwani, India Country Lead, Amazon Echo & Smarthomes, noted how children even began their first-time speech and singing with Alexa’s help, while also ensuring ‘peace of mind’ with Alexa being tailored to meets kids needs and questions.
“Young parents use Alexa twice as much due to the skills and support tools available on the App, and animal sounds with nursery rhymes and songs remained the kids’ perennial favourite, besides Alexa even employing “shushing” sounds and “white noise” to put babies to sleep,” she said while describing Alexa as a “game-changer” for +diaper-changers+.
Even the older generation uses Alexa for prayers and devotions, reminder and alerts, Malvika said while noting that the focus is on inter-operability where Alexa interacts with smart home devices to operate the fans, lights and other appliances.
To a question, she said 99% of India’s pincodes residents had been covered by Alexa for their interaction, besides 200% increase in smarthome devices connected with Alexa in India over the last three years.
While asking Alexa to control the lights is the most common request, other usages including controlling smart fans and smart ACs rose by 37%,” said Parag Gupta, Director and Country Manager, Amazon Devices, India.
“We are encouraged by this growing trend and continuing our innovation,” he said, adding that with the rising selection of smart home devices that work with Alexa, it was exciting to see more Indians adopt the smart way of living.
