Amazon’s Alexa could control your smart home without you knowing

Credit: Telegraph

Amazon’s smart assistant Alexa can start making its own decisions about when to turn your lights off or what temperature to set your thermostat.

The company said on its customer support website that users could set up "automatic actions" for what are known as "hunches", where Alexa picks up patterns and spots when users break that pattern, for example forgetting to turn the lights off before bed.

In the past, Alexa has acted on these "hunches" by reminding users and asking them whether they want to stick with their normal routine.

It now appears the smart assistant will instead be able to automatically take the actions without asking home-owners. 

In setting up their systems, users will be able to "select the hunches you want Alexa to act on". These include things such as having Alexa turn off the lights when you’re asleep, or adjusting the thermostat when you’re away.

Amazon has previously described this work as giving Alexa intuition, saying it had "reached a point with deep neural networks and machine learning that we can actually program intuition".

The company did not respond to requests for comment. 

In recent years, Alexa has also been given the ability to have her own opinions and become more conversational.

Speaking at an Amazon event in Seattle in 2018, Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services said Alexa was learning "tens of thousands of things".

Late last year, the smart assistant learned the ability to understand what users wanted before they asked, so if they asked how long it took to steep tea, Alexa would respond with the answer and then ask users if they would like her to set a timer.

Amazon software engineers said the "goal for Alexa is that customers should find interacting with her as natural as interacting with another human being". 

Across the UK, more than one in five households use smart speakers which give them access to voice assistants.