From Amazon Echo and the Nest Learning Thermostat to Philips Hue light bulbs and the August Smart Lock, there are already loads of gadgets on the market that can make your home a little smarter. Now, two tech giants — Amazon and Intel — are coming together to "advance the Smart Home ecosystem and extend natural language capabilities to consumers everywhere."
The companies on Thursday unveiled two new technology initiatives to further that mission. For starters, they're working together on Intel-based smart speaker reference designs that will feature Amazon Alexa. The new designs are meant to "help hardware manufacturers accelerate their development of voice-enabled devices with the Intel platform and Alexa Voice Services," Intel and Amazon said. Developers and manufacturers should be able to check out the designs at some point in the first quarter of 2017.
"Amazon and Intel see a tremendous opportunity to bring the benefits of a personal voice experience to millions of new consumers and are collaborating to encourage developers and device manufacturers to extend natural voice interaction to more products via Amazon Alexa," Amazon's Ted Karczewski wrote in a blog post.
On top of that, Intel is making it easier for its customers to bring voice control features to their connected products by adding Alexa to its Smart Home Hub.
"A truly smart home is one that provides users with experiences that ease the tasks of running a home and enrich daily life," Karczewski wrote. "With voice as the central interface, customers have an even more natural way to manage the hundreds of tasks they experience every day."