INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The update comes as Amazon is expanding to woo children as part of smart home push.
Amazon.com's Alexa has a little something to teach your kids about manners
After receiving feedback from some parents concerned about how voice assistants are affecting their kids attitudes, the company updated
Alexa to reward children who asks for things nicely.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.Amazon heard from parents in comments on its products that they
wanted a way to teach etiquette while using the voice assistant, the company said in statement
The company then spoke to child development experts about the best way for Alexa to do that.(Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos is the
owner of The Washington Post.)The answer they came up with was positive reinforcement
You won't hear Alexa ask, for example, "What's the magic word" if a child doesn't say "please." Instead, it will thank a child for asking
nicely if he or she remembers to slip in that oh-so-important "magic" word.The update comes as the company is expanding its efforts to woo
children as part of their smart home push
Amazon also announced on Wednesday that it's made a child-focused version of its $80 Echo Dot speaker, which have durable, candy-colored
cases and that its adding parental controls to the Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Plus to help limit when a child can interact with their
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.Children have become a key demographic for Amazon, Google, Apple and
Microsoft as they move deeper into the home with smart speakers and strive to make their particular voice assistant a central part of the
household.The strategy has raised concerns among some privacy advocates, such as the Center for Digital Democracy, about new avenues for
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 that 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
But it hasn't slowed down development of those programs.(This story has not been edited by staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated
