Amazon’s Alexa is a highly capable voice assistant, and while it has access to thousands of different skills, users will actually have to choose which skills they want to use and enable them accordingly. This means that if you do not have certain skills enabled, you won’t be able to use them.
This can sometimes lead to the wrong impression that Alexa isn’t capable of doing something, but Amazon wants to change that because in a recently launched feature, Amazon is now allowing Alexa to actually make recommendations for skills for things that it isn’t able to do, and point users towards the right direction.
In a statement made to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed the new feature and said, “Currently, in limited scenarios, Alexa will respond to certain questions by suggesting skills that may be helpful. We are excited for this feature to expand and to roll out to more customers over time to help them discover new skills and get information through Alexa.”
This feature was initially discovered by Voicebot when they asked Alexa a question related to a stock price to which she did not know the answer to, and Alexa responded by saying, “I don’t know that. Maybe the skill Stock Prices by Opening Bell can help. Do you want to try it?” While it’s not exactly a groundbreaking new feature, it does help to make Alexa more useful and help users discover new skills in the future moving forwards.