The Amazon Echo voice assistant Alexia updated through the cloud which means she’s always learning new tricks. She’s progressed from being able to tell you the weather to being able to turn your lights off and on. Now Amazon is adding support for Alexa to play Audible books through her speakers. Audible was bought by Amazon a few years back, while they’ve kept it separate from Prime the service is closely tied to the company.
Alexia could already read a book but it wouldn’t sound as professional as an Audible book, but being a free feature we cannot complain. Amazon uses the same text to speech future to read Wikipedia articles back and other text-based articles. Now if you’re an Audible subscriber this would allow you to listen to your books in more places and without having to get up.
Alexia is not exclusive to the Echo. Smart devices have added it to their platforms, even Ford is working to build her in their new infotainment system. Amazon came out of the back field with their voice assistant becoming more useful than Apple’s Siri, and quickly approaching the usefulness of Google Now.
Tell us what you think about Amazon’s Alexia and being able to listen to Audible books now. If you have an Echo try the new feature by saying “Alexa, read my book.”