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Virtual assistants will soon be as commonplace as smartphones -- in many parts of the world, they already are. Most smartphones have a built-in assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI), whether it's Siri in iPhones or Google Assistant (now Gemini) in Android phones.
Inside our homes, though, Amazon Alexa has become the most popular virtual assistant in the US and around the world, as a widely adopted virtual assistant. Users from various countries outside the US keep Echo devices in their homes with Alexa set to different languages.
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I've been using Alexa for a few years, and here are some ways that the assistant has changed the way I manage my smart home and use my Echo devices.
1. Become a lighting assistant
Each time I enter my bedroom's en-suite bathroom, an Echo Dot greets me by turning on the lights and saying, "Hello, gorgeous." The Echo Dot's occupancy sensor detects when someone is near and runs the routine of switching on the lights and saying the phrase.
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I have a smart wall light switch with a built-in motion sensor that turns on at night each time the headlights of a car are spotted on the window opposite it. Aside from getting creeped out when my bathroom lights randomly turned on at four in the morning, it was getting annoying, so I delegated the task to Alexa.
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