Amazon Brings Alexa To AWS IoT Core Devices

Amazon's annual AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas -- where the tech giant reliably announces a host of products heading to Amazon Web Services, its cloud platform -- doesn't kick off officially until next week. But that didn't stop the tech giant from previewing a few of the highlights, the bulk of which relate to the internet of things (IoT). From a report: Why the investment in IoT? Perhaps because AWS maintains pole position in the segment, which is anticipated to be worth $212 billion by the end of 2019. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels told VentureBeat in a recent interview that AWS customers deploy upwards of hundreds of thousands of sensors. First on the list was Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Integration for AWS IoT Core, the managed cloud service that lets gadgets interact with cloud apps and other devices. It's designed to let manufacturers create Alexa built-in devices -- or accessories that connect to Alexa to play music, control smart home devices, and more -- with constrained hardware resources. Alexa built-in devices previously required at least 100MB of RAM and ARM Cortex A-class microprocessors, but thanks to new AWS cloud processing components that offload tasks like buffering and mixing audio, the baseline requirement has been reduced to 1MB of RAM and Arm Cortex M-class microcontrollers. Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Integration for AWS IoT Core specifically offloads media retrieval, audio decoding, audio mixing, and state management to a new virtual Alexa-built in device in the cloud. New AWS IoT-reserved MQTT topics allow for message transfer between devices connected to AWS IoT Core and AVS using the MQTT protocol.

Yay for devices spying on us

[liquid_schwartz]

Just what the world needs, smaller and cheaper spies for our households. The silly part about many of these devices is that often Amazon owns, or is able to use, the data. It's amazing how few people have caught on to the commercial dangers of using AWS, or Google to a lesser degree, as both have a stake in your devices data. Become too successful and you'll find an Amazon basics knockoff of your device.

Re:

[cusco]

The silly part about many of these devices is that often Amazon owns, or is able to use, the data.

Only if your company is stupid enough to offer to share it with them for some reason, or you make it publicly available. The defaults all say that your data is your data, period. That's what you're paying for, conspiracy theories like your are just uninformed twaddle created by people who don't know how to secure data. You have to make the effort to make it available to others.

You've got to be kidding me

[slashmydots]

So spying and data collecting nonstop mixed with massively insecure, rushed garbage IoT crap made by companies with no standards? Great idea!

Screw those assholes.

[blunttrauma]

I noticed my Kindle Fire was low on space, even though I don’t really use it all that much. I did some poking around to try and figure where the space went, I discovered at some point during a software update, Amazon had installed Alexia, and even though I was not aware it was even there, let alone used it, it had accumulated 500 MB of data.

Really wondering what this fucking wiretap has been sending to the internet without my knowledge, and for how long.