Fire TV users can now control the devices via voice command.
Amazon has announced that an upgrade to its Alexa AI system has enabled any Amazon Echo smart home device to connect to any Fire TV media player.
If you are in the US and have just one Fire TV plugged into a television, you can pair your Echo device with it just by asking Alexa a question that mentions Fire TV. Users with multiple Fire TVs will need to select which device to connect to using the Alexa app.
From there, users can call up TV shows and movies from the comfort of the couch just by speaking to Alexa. Users who have Fire TV Edition smart TVs will also be able to adjust things like volume and input channel by voice command.
It’s one relatively small step in the evolution of the smart home, with Apple also having enabled Apple TV connectivity with its Siri AI platform, and even the BBC experimenting with voice command technology for its iPlayer media service. For its part, Amazon is planning to take things another step further soon with a feature that will let users call up video feeds from connected cameras on their Fire TVs, again by voice command.
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