While Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa can already send messages through its own messaging prompt, your recipient needed to have an Echo device or the Alexa app on their smartphone as well. But now a new skill is being added so you can tell your Alexa-enabled smart speaker or smartphone to send text messages to any of your contacts. However, it is only currently limited to Android users in the US and there’s no word yet when it will expand to other platforms and territories (or if it ever will).
The previous Alexa messaging skill lets you send text messages but only to those who are already in the whole Amazon ecosystem or have any of their Echo devices. While already useful, it was of course very limited. But now, if you have an Android device that has Alexa or a smart speaker that supports the digital assistant, then you can simply say “Hey Alexa, send a text message to ______” and if that name is in your contacts list, it will be able to do so.
Actually, you don’t even have to say text message since Alexa will be able to figure it out if the recipient also has Alexa or not so it will send it either through Alexa messaging or text messaging. Alexa users will receive instructions on how to set this up through their mobile app. They can also toggle on/off the Send SMS ability on their My Profile section on Alexa.
Again, this skill is only available for Android users for now, at least in terms of the ability of sending SMS. But users on other platforms can still probably receive it. Alexa users, try it out and let us know if it’s as easy as advertised.
VIA: SlashGear
