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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 on iPhones or Google Assistant (now Gemini) on Android phones.
Inside our homes, though, Amazon Alexa has become the most popular virtual assistant in the US and around the world. Now that the generative-AI-powered Alexa+ is available to all US users, even more people are likely to adopt it.
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I've been using Alexa for a few years and Alexa+ for months, and here are some ways the assistant has changed how 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 a routine that switches on the lights and says the phrase.
Also: Everything you need to know about Alexa+, Amazon's generative AI assistant
I have a smart wall light switch with a built-in motion sensor that turns on at night whenever the headlights of a car are spotted in 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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