Amazon’s assistant can now turn on your robot vacuum or turn off your smart lights all by itself. Yes, you heard that right.
Amazon announced last September that it would soon release an update that would allow Alexa to respond to suspicions it might have about the way your connected devices behave in your home – turning off a smart light in a room long after you go to sleep, for example. Normally, Hunches works by allowing Alexa to only suggest solutions for these detected problems. But now Alexa users can choose to let the smart assistant do the thing itself.
Hunches are on by default, although Alexa will walk you through how to turn the feature off after explaining your first Hunch. To access your Hunches preferences, open the Alexa app and select the option “more” from the menu at the bottom of the screen. Select settings, scroll down and click Hunches.
This was of particular interest to me, the owner of a connected coffee machine. Sure, I thought, this can go horribly wrong if Alexa goes rogue and brews my next morning coffee in the middle of the night – all while slowly running out of my stash of coffee grounds.
But as of today, the feature is limited to smart locks, lights, plugs and thermostats. However, if you have another connected device, the spokesperson said users “may start to receive Hunches from Alexa based on how you normally use your connected devices.”
For now, my coffee seems safe. So help me when this bot starts to slowly swing away to what’s left of my sanity.
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