The free Alexa Voice Service (AVS), the same service that powers Amazon Echo, is now available in developer preview to hobbyists and hardware makers who want to integrate Alexa into their connected devices. AVS enables your customers to speak to Alexa through the microphone on your device and Alexa will respond through the device’s speakers. With the developer preview, you get access to a collection of self-service tools, documentation, and APIs and code samples to enhance your device and delight your customers with new voice experiences. Alexa includes access to information, music, audiobooks, news, weather, traffic and more, including any custom skills you create using the Alexa Skills Kit to differentiate your device. Learn more about the developer preview.
Take Advantage of the Alexa Voice Service
Use AVS to extend your hardware’s capabilities and interact with your customers in new ways. Benefits of AVS include:
- Create Frictionless Interfaces for Your Customers. Allow your customers to control your device in more intuitive ways with a natural language voice interface. By integrating AVS with your device, your customer no longer needs to get out their phone, find an app, and use their thumbs to invoke a command. All they have to do is ask via the microphone on your device.
- Scale Quickly in the Cloud. AVS is cloud based and scales as your needs scale. You don’t need to worry about provisioning hardware and managing infrastructure to power your voice experience.
- Integrate Easily. No experience with voice recognition or Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is required. Using AVS, add Alexa to your device in just a few hours. Leave understanding human speech to us and focus on your differentiated value add to customers.
- Build for Free. Using AVS to power speech experiences on your devices is completely free.
It's Easy to Get Started
To get started with the Alexa Voice Service on your device, we recommend you review the following materials in this order:
- Read the Getting Started Guide, which details how to call the Alexa Voice Service cloud API from your device.
- View our API Reference to learn how to use the RESTful APIs.
- View our Reference Implementation Guide to learn how to set up and configure reference devices.
- Review the Alexa Skills Kit Getting Started Guide to understand how to create custom skills for your device.
- Sign up for a free account and then get started with the AVS APIs.
The Alexa Fund
Amazon is investing up to $100 million to support developers, manufacturers, and start-ups of all sizes who are creating unique and innovative experiences designed around the human voice. Learn more here.
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