Digital voice assistants are great in concept. Being able to tell an AI what to do sounds ideal, but sometimes it doesn’t always work out the way we think. This is because sometimes when we speak, we might stutter or ramble or trip over our words, which in turn can cause the digital assistant to get confused.However, that’s something that Amazon is looking to try and address in an update to Alexa. In a report from Forbes, Amazon has revealed that they will be updating Alexa to make it “slower” when it comes to executing commands. The idea is that it will be beneficial to those who might suffer from speech impediments who might also want to use digital assistants like Alexa.
According to Shehzad Mevawalla, Head of Alexa Speech Recognition at Amazon, “Alexa is a voice-first experience, and we are always looking for ways to improve speech recognition for all speaking styles. Some customers have told us they just need a bit more time before Alexa responds to their requests. That’s why we’ve built this feature—to help improve all customers’ interactions with Alexa, and ensure they get the most out of their experience.”
This won’t be applied by default so for those who don’t need the extra time, you can keep using Alexa the usual way. However, those who do can enable this by going into Alexa’s settings.