Amazon.com Inc. today announced a major update to its Alexa voice assistant’s developer toolkit that brings artificial intelligence improvements, as well as features that will give consumers new ways of using the service. 

The update was unveiled during the company’s virtual Alexa Live event. 

Since its launch in 2014, Amazon’s voice assistant has shipped with hundreds of millions of devices ranging from smart speakers to TVs. There’s a sizable developer community offering voice apps, or Skills,  that extend Alexa’s default feature set. Just as the Android and iOS’ large third-party app selections are a key differentiator for the operating systems, so are Skills playing an increasingly important role in Amazon’s growth strategy for Alexa.

Today’s update to the Alexa Skills Kit developer toolkit brings significant under-the-hood AI improvements. Amazon is adding new deep learning models for natural language understanding that, according to the company, will enable Skills to recognize users’ voice commands with 15% higher accuracy on average. Existing Skills can take advantage of the technology without any modifications.

A second goal Amazon has with the update is enhancing the platform-specific use cases that are emerging for Alexa as it’s added to more devices. Specifically, it’s looking to make Alexa more useful for consumers accessing the assistant via their mobile devices, wearables and more niche gadgets such as smart displays.

To improve the experience on mobile devices, Amazon is introducing a tool called Apps for Alexa. Mobile developers can use it to let customers control apps via Alexa in a hands-free way. For example, if users have an Alexa mobile accessory such as Echo Buds or an Alexa built-in in their phone, they can interact with skills using Alexa for Apps.

Amazon is also looking to make Alexa more useful on smart screens. Developers can now let users make in-skill purchases, such as food delivery orders, on Alexa-powered smart screens such as the Echo Show. There’s also a new Alexa Web API for Games that provides the ability to develop video games for such devices.

Developers building Skills for portable gadgets, like smartwatches and the Alexa-equipped Echo Buds earbuds, are receiving a new capability called skill resumption. It reduces the number of times users have to manually invoke Alexa Skills by enabling Skills to automatically “resume” at opportune times. For example, if a consumer uses Echo Buds to hail an Uber car, Uber’s Alexa Skill can automatically notify them when their ride arrives without requiring a manual invocation. 

Amazon is also making dozens of other more specialized upgrades to its developer toolkit. Among the additions are Quick Links for Alexa, which can be embedded in apps, websites and ads to automatically launch an Alexa Skill when the user clicks them. Amazon has also released into beta the Alexa Conversations AI-powered dialog builder it previewed last year, which uses machine learning to automate some of the work involved in developing Skills. 

Amazon’s investment in its developer ecosystem is already bearing fruit. In conjunction with the new feature announcements, the company today disclosed that engagement with Alexa Skills has nearly doubled over the last year. 

Photo: Amazon