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Amazon Patents New Alexa Feature That Knows When You're ill and Offers To Sell You Medicine (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Amazon has patented a new version of its virtual assistant Alexa which can automatically detect when you're ill and offer to sell you medicine. From a report: The proposed feature would analyse speech and identify other signs of illness or emotion. One example given in the patent is a woman coughing and sniffling while she speaks to her Amazon Echo device. Alexa first suggests some chicken soup to cure her cold, and then offers to order cough drops on Amazon. If Amazon were to introduce this technology, it could compete with a service planned by the NHS. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said earlier this year that the NHS was working on making information from its NHS Choices online service available through Alexa. Amazon's system, however, doesn't need to ask people whether they're ill -- it would just know automatically by analyzing their speech. Adverts for sore throat products could be automatically played to people who sound like they have a sore throat, Amazon's patent suggests.

7 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Cough drops by nospam007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I's prefer if Alexa phone my boss to tell him I can't come in for a couple of days for national health reasons.

  2. Psst.. hey bud, wanna buy some pills? by kimgkimg · · Score: 2

    So Alexa is now a drug dealer? What's next? Pimp daddy?

    1. Re:Psst.. hey bud, wanna buy some pills? by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 2

      That's Google Pimp Daddy(TM) to you, buddy.

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      That is all.
    2. Re:Psst.. hey bud, wanna buy some pills? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Funny

      How do you know if someone "sounds horny", though?

      They speak with a male's voice.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  3. Give me a break by Camarillo+Brillo · · Score: 2

    Really people, do we need this obvious capitslist BS. Its an interesting science fair project, but if you don't have the insight to know when you need some chicken soup, then you deserve to suffer your malady . Wake up people, you will always be smarter than the technology in your hand.

  4. Unplanned soccer by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    "It sounds like you injured your foot kicking me around. Would you like to order some pain medication?"

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    Table-ized A.I.
  5. This sounds awful by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 2

    This sounds just awful. Alexa is going to pimp cough drops to me all day long, despite the fact that I already have two bags of them sitting in the cabinet? Or the fact that I've already got a case of chicken soup in the pantry? If I'm vegan, is Alexa still going to pimp the chicken soup, or is it going to push some BS homeopathic remedy instead? I just don't get paying large sums of money to get a device that just peppers me with ads.

    --
    Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?