AWS News Blog
New – Alexa Skills Kit, Alexa Voice Service, Alexa Fund
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Amazon Echo is a new type of device designed around your voice. Echo connects to Alexa, a cloud-based voice service powered (of course) by AWS. You can ask Alexa to provide information, answer questions, play music, read the news, and get results or answers instantly.
When you are in the same room as an Amazon Echo, you simply say the wake word (either “Alexa” or “Amazon”) and then make your request. For example, you might say “Alexa, when do the Seattle Mariners play next?” or “Alexa, will it ever rain in Seattle?” Behind the scenes, code running in the cloud hears, understands, and processes your spoken requests.
Today we are giving you the ability to create new voice-driven capabilities (also known as skills) for Alexa using the new Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). You can connect existing services to Alexa in minutes with just a few lines of code. You can also build entirely new voice-powered experiences in a matter of hours, even if you know nothing about speech recognition or natural language processing.
We will also be opening up the underlying Alexa Voice Service (AVS) to developers in preview form. Hardware manufacturers and other participants in the new and exciting Internet of Things (IoT) world can sign up today for notification when the preview is available. Any device that has a speaker, a microphone, and an Internet connection can integrate Alexa with a few lines of code.
In order to help to inspire creativity and to fuel innovation in and around voice technology, we are also announcing the Alexa Fund. The Alexa Fund will provide up to $100 million in investments to support developers, manufacturers, and start-ups of all sizes who are creating new designed around the human voice to improve customers’ lives.
ASK and AWS Lambda
You can build new skills for Alexa using AWS Lambda. You simply write the code using Node.js and upload it to Lambda through the AWS Management Console, where it becomes known as a Lambda function. After you upload and test your function using the sample events built in to the Console, you can sign in to the Alexa Developer Portal, register your code in the portal (by creating an Alexa App), and then use the ARN (Amazon Resource Name) of the function to connect it to the App. After you complete your testing, you can publish your App in order to make it available to Echo owners. Lambda will take care of hosting and running your code in a scalable, fault-tolerant environment. In many cases, the function that supports an Alexa skill will remain comfortably within the Lambda Free Tier. Read Developing Your Alexa Skill as a Lambda Function to get started.
ASK as a Web Service
You can also build your app as a web service and take on more of the hosting duties yourself using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), AWS Elastic Beanstalk, or an on-premises server fleet. If you choose any of these options, the service must be Internet-accessible and it must adhere to the Alexa app interface specification. It must support HTTPS over SSL/TLS on port 443 and it must provide a certificate that matches the domain name of the service endpoint. Your code is responsible for verifying that the request actually came from Alexa and for checking the time-based message signature. To learn more about this option, read Developing Your Alexa App as a Web Service.
Learn More
We are publishing a lot of information about ASK, AVS, and the Alexa Fund today. Here are some good links to get you started:
- Alexa Skills Kit
- Alexa Voice Service
- Alexa Fund
— Jeff;