Amazon today announced a new feature that turns Alexa into a reading buddy for children. It also supports Alexa Voice Profiles For Kids. These profiles personalize Alexa's experience for each child across all Echo devices in the house. Both features are compatible as Alexa can identify the person speaking so that the device can respond appropriately to requests like Alexa, let's read.Amazon Kids+ subscriptions are required to access this feature. This $2.99/month subscription service provides access to thousands more kid-friendly TV shows, movies, books, apps, and games for families. It also includes premium content for Echo devices like ad-free playlists and radio stations, Audible books, and special Alexa skills.After signing up, the child will be able to direct Alexa to start reading with them. Alexa will then pick up an ebook or book that is compatible. Alexa will ask the child what book they are reading and how many pages. This feature is compatible with hundreds of children's books, digital and print, that are part of Amazon Kids+. When it's the child's turn to read. Alexa will encourage the child when they are doing well and offer support when they are struggling.Support for Alexa Voice Profiles for Kids, which are new features for Alexa, will be available starting today. This feature allows parents and guardians to create voice profiles for up to four children in their families. The Alexa experience will be customized to the person speaking when enabled. Alexa will apply parental controls if enabled. It will filter explicit music and limit calls and messages to only approved contacts. The child can also be restricted to Alexa skills that the parents have approved. Alexa will give the child access to kid-friendly skills, music and videos, as well as providing kid-friendly answers to children's inquiries.These features can make Alexa more enjoyable and more useful for families. Parents should weigh the risks and benefits of having their children's voices recorded and analyzed. They also need to decide how long they want these recordings stored. Amazon currently uses voice recordings of children to improve its speech recognition and natural languages understanding systems. These recordings may also be manually reviewed in some cases. Parents can choose to opt out of participating in the deletion of recordings that are associated with their child's history. This can be done either individually or collectively via the Alexa App Settings. You can set recordings to delete automatically on an ongoing basis for 3 months or 18 months. Voice requests can also be used to delete recordings.If the parent does not save the recordings of their child, they will not be able access the history to view the requests made by their child over time via the Parent Dashboard.Before enabling Voice Profiles or Reading Sidekick, every parent must decide what is best for their household. Or, more generally, whether they wish to have a smart speaker in their home.Amazon claims that the Alexa Voice Profiles for Kids will be available to all Amazon customers by Friday July 2. Reading Sidekick is now available.
