Amazon announced availability of the Echo Look ($199), a fashion-forward smart speaker with a built-in depth-sensing camera featuring LED lighting and computer vision-based background blur. When users ask Alexa to take a photo or video, the camera takes what Amazon calls a “share-worthy shot of your look.” An Alexa style assistant gives personalized recommendations, advice for organizing a closet and fashion inspiration tips from Amazon, Vogue and GQ, said Amazon. The e-commerce company included style and collection features that suggest new pieces and colors to complement an existing wardrobe.

Comcast Xfinity customers can find local showtimes and order movie tickets on TV using their X1 voice remote via a partnership with Fandango, said the companies Wednesday. The feature launched Wednesday with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; more movies will be added during the year, Comcast and Xfinity said. Customers have to watch a trailer for the movie and will receive an on-screen notification prompting them to say, “Get tickets” into their voice remote -- or press the info button on the remote -- to initiate the online ticket-buying process, and then they’ll be able to review a list of showtimes at nearby theaters, said the companies. Customers can opt to send the local showtimes to their mobile phone to complete the purchase via Fandango’s mobile app or website. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom generally arrives in theaters June 22.

The Schlage Sense Smart Deadbolt is now compatible with Google Assistant, the lock company said Tuesday. Users can interact with the lock by commanding that it be locked or asking its status, said the company. A Schlage Sense Wi-Fi adapter is required. Via the Android and Apple apps, users can create and delete up to 30 access codes for friends and family; schedule access codes so guests can enter only during assigned times; check on the lock's status from anywhere via the Wi-Fi adapter; view past activity to see which codes have been used and when; and check battery life, said the company.

Amazon is “evaluating options to make this case even less likely,” a company spokeswoman emailed us Thursday, after widely published reports that an Echo smart speaker recorded a conversation and sent it to a person in a user’s contact list. “Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa,’” the spokeswoman said, in response to our question how the snafu occurred. “Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’” she told us. The background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list, she said. “Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?'” Alexa interpreted background conversation as “right,” she said. “As unlikely as this string of events is,” said the spokeswoman, Amazon is looking at ways to make it less likely to occur.

Yale locks expanded its Alexa support Tuesday, saying Assure Lock deadbolts can be unlocked by voice when used with a compatible smart home hub or an Amazon Echo Plus with a Zigbee-based Assure Lock. The capability adds to the existing voice control capabilities to secure Z-Wave and Zigbee-enabled door locks and check status, said Yale. The unlock feature is turned off by default and is enabled when users provide Amazon credentials using the Alexa app. For voice unlock, users are prompted to set a four-digit voice code and then asked by Alexa to say the code to unlock, said the company. Alexa will complete the unlock request only when the correct voice code is provided; unlocking can also be done directly from the Alexa app. Last week, Schlage announced Alexa voice unlock capability for two deadbolts (see 1805100052 or 1805100071).

Morgan Stanley announced the launch of Amazon Alexa skills Monday, with three that make the financial company's market insights and podcasts available on Alexa-enabled devices. The command “Alexa, play my flash briefing" brings insights and analysis on emerging trends and market developments and commentary from thought leaders. "Alexa, open Morgan Stanley" allows clients to access flash briefs, original content and a Jeopardy-style financial term game, it said. Alexa skills are a way to adapt to client needs and integrate the company into how people consume information today, it said.

Google’s announcement from its I/O event Tuesday that it's making the Assistant voice control engine more “naturally conversational” took an ethics beating before the Duplex voice system reached users. The company said its Google Duplex is able to understand “complex sentences, fast speech, and long remarks, so it can respond naturally in a phone conversation.” The artificial intelligence technology is expected to begin tests this summer, Google said. By Thursday, after the ethics backlash, Google said calls would include a disclosure that the calling bot is not a person, putting a bit of a leash on the nascent voice-spoof technology, reports said. Demonstrations were so convincing, showing bots making haircut and dinner appointments with real people over the phone, that many responded to the eerily convincing technology with unease. For a population already inundated with unwanted calls from bots promoting politicians, timeshares and financial scams, the idea of being on the other end of the line with a robot was off-putting to many. “During its pre-recorded demonstration of Duplex, Google didn’t say if the experimental service, powered by Google’s WaveNet natural speech generator, would identify itself as a robot when it makes your phone calls,” wrote Gizmodo editor Patrick Lucas Austin. Bridget Carey, senior editor-CNET, said in a video, “There’s nothing to indicate that you’re talking to something that’s not alive, and that’s a problem." On ethics, Carey asked whether consumers have the right to know whether they’re talking to a robot and lamented the current “age of disinformation,” where people can’t tell the difference between fake and real news and where photos are manipulated to play on emotions. “Google is showing us how easy it is for dialog to be spoofed,” and that could lead to even more scams down the road, she said. Duplex had its share of admirers, too. Said Twitter user Sarang Brahme following Duplex's introduction: “Listen to these real-time Google AI conversations with real people, Mind blowing! ... Future is here?”

LG said its 2018 AI TVs, announced at CES, are activated with Google Assistant voice control. Artificial intelligence features are available through the TVs’ remote control with no smart speaker required, it said Tuesday. Users can speak natural language commands to control TV functions, discover and play content and control TV settings, and they can engage Google Assistant to manage tasks, access information and control Assistant-equipped lighting and appliances, it said. Customers with Google Home speakers, and other devices with Google Assistant built in, can send voice commands to the TV from those devices, it said.

Shopping by smartphone, done by 43 percent of handset owners weekly, will peak in coming years, said an Ericsson retail report Monday. Sixty-three percent of smartphone shoppers expect most people to have a personal shopping adviser within three years, creating a demand for digital shopping assistants to help with purchase decisions, it said. Sixty-nine percent of artificial and virtual reality device owners think those technologies will give smartphones “all the benefits of physical stores within 3 years,” said the report. Connectivity is driving two shifts in how people shop, with the trend toward smartphone purchasing expected to lead soon to the use of smart home speakers for “aspirational shopping support,” while also driving use of smart speakers for routine household purchases, it said. Selecting the type of shopping assistant for home and personal purchases will soon be more important than the actual purchase decision, said Ericsson. Sixty-three percent of smartphone shoppers want help with price comparisons, which could create a role for a home restocking assistant, and 48 percent want help making shopping decisions easy, a likely role for a personal shopping adviser, it said. Consumers expect AR/VR-technology to deliver the benefits of physical stores, with more than half envisioning an increase in home deliveries as fewer trek to stores. Respondents cited potential issues with personal information in the future and the question of whether digital shopping assistants can be trusted, it said. Results came from an online survey in January of 5,048 advanced internet users in Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, São Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. Respondents were ages 15 to 69 and fit the profile of urban early adopters.

Chinese artificial intelligence platforms are scrambling to replicate Amazon’s Alexa success in the U.S. in their domestic market, said a Monday blog post from Futuresource, which bumped its smart speaker sales forecast to 10 million units for 2018 -- 20 percent of global demand -- based on ballooning growth over the past six months. While online retailer JD.com, entered the China market first in 2016 using the iFlytek voice platform, e-commerce giant Alibaba took the category to the next level with the $75 Tmall Genie, said analyst Rasika D'Souza. Like Amazon, Alibaba sells direct to consumers, and it heavily discounted the Tmall Genie during its Singles Day promotion, logging sales of 1 million units in the launch quarter, she said. Xiaomi, meanwhile, launched a $30 speaker in Q4, along with a smart home and entertainment control ecosystem. In Q1, the smart speaker category sold more than 1.5 million units in China with CE retail chain Suning and smaller Chinese brands and third-party players coming to market, said Futuresource data. Baidu, the biggest search engine in China, bowed the $95 screen-based Little Fish smart speaker at CES, and has teamed with other speaker vendors to expand its ecosystem in consumers' homes, said the report. Smart speakers could have a positive impact on in-home music listening, not a popular activity in China, where most listening is done on the go using headphones, D'Souza said. Voice control was evident on the streets in China, said D'Souza, after a trip there last month, where she observed pedestrians and drivers giving voice commands to their devices, typically for navigation services. The growing use of voice-based services puts Chinese AI platforms at an advantage in user volume, said the analyst, citing a total available market of a billion across mobile devices and other hardware. “This scale of use will ensure the platforms quickly become far more sophisticated and extend beyond smart speakers to penetrate the home, car, mobile and B2B ecosystems,” she said.