Slashdot Mirror


Amazon Wants Alexa To Read Blog Posts and Broadcast Church Sermons (cnet.com)

Amazon's Alexa Skills Blueprints are free online templates that let you create custom Alexa tricks without needing to code. Now, the online retailer is giving those blueprints some new tricks of their own. From a report: Announced in a blog post Wednesday morning, the newest Skill Blueprints are "built specifically for content creators, bloggers, and organizations so they can reach anyone with an Alexa-enabled device." Skills created with any of Amazon's blueprints can now be submitted to Amazon for certification and publication in the Alexa app's Skills Store in the US. "Keep your skill personal to Alexa-enabled devices associated with your Amazon account, share it with friends and family, or publish it so anyone can discover, use and review your skill," Amazon says. That open approach might help bolster the number of Alexa skills available in the Alexa app.

8 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Alexa, read me the Penthouse Forum by the_skywise · · Score: 4, Funny

    "oh Yes. Baby. you are getting me so hot. Baby. Yes. Just like that."

  2. Just what the world needs by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

    The word of God through the mouth of the Beast.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Just what the world needs by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Funny

      Today only! Any Alexa-enabled device, only $6.66!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Just what the world needs by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      “And God said, ‘thou shalt Subscribe & Save to many items.’”

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  3. Re:"Alexa, Shut Up About Satan." by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    Well not all Churches are so focused on Satan. There are a number of moderate churches out there. Like it or not America is Amazons biggest customer base, and is also a very religious country.
    I myself wouldn't want Alexa to read the sermon, but make it cheap and easy for the local churches to record them onto Amazon, and have Alexa rebroadcast it on demand, I think would be a good use of the technology.

    From listening to some of the religious people (poor) arguments about atheism. It makes me worry, that the only thing stopping some religion people from being mass murders is the fact they have religion. So having Alexa, broadcast these sermons, to keep such people morals aligned, it probably a net positive.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Read blog posts and then broadcast church sermons? by Drethon · · Score: 2

    At first I read this to mean "read blog posts and then broadcast church sermons". I want to see what kind of sermons an AI comes up with after reading random blog posts.

  5. Re:How ironic... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    So... a real thing built with a fake intelligence talking about imaginary beings?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  6. Gated Podcasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > Amazon AI plug-in for WordPress and provide the blueprint with an RSS feed.

    Everything I see on this is literally just using RSS to do the equivalent of a podcast to the Alexa device, then later converting this on Alexa's servers via text-to-speech.

    They could literally just do podcast support and achieve not only the same goals, but START OUT with hundreds of thousands of "broadcasts". Wordpress also comes RSS enabled by default.

    This plugin I cannot see what it does at all except make the process more complicated and to get in their own ways. Maybe they just want to "certify" those RSS feeds and only allow those they allow. This is just a moronic gated version of podcasting.