Third-Party Alexa Devices Will Soon Be Able to Make Calls

You can make calls using Alexa, but only if you have an Amazon device…at least for now. According to reports, Priya Abani, director of Alexa Voice Service at Amazon, says third-party devices will soon be able to make calls using Alexa.

There are nearly 100 Alexa-enabled devices, and Amazon has a quality-assurance to test the devices built by other companies using its SDKs and APIs. Soon, some of these devices will allow users to make calls and send messages just like they would be able to do with an Amazon Echo.

"Many new Alexa features are cloud-based, which means we can push them to AVS [Alexa Voice Services] devices with a simple software update," says Pete Thompson, vice president of Alexa Voice Services. "Others require code on the device itself. Voice calling is one of those features, as it requires developers to have a VoIP stack running locally on the device.”

Abani and Thompson talked at Amazon's Lab126 in Sunnyvale, California, and suggested that the Anker Eufy Genie—a Echo Dot competitor—might be the first device to start offering the call and message features.