Amazon announced a new sound library coming in the form of an Alexa Skills Kit update earlier this month, with its platform promising to facilitate the process of creating unique and highly engaging Alexa Skills, i.e. third-party apps. Much like its name implies, the service provides Alexa developers with new content they can leverage to generate sound combinations that will help them make Skills which stand out from the competition while making the overall experience of using Alexa more varied. The sound library includes “hundreds” of unique sounds spanning fourteen categories such as nature, home, ambiance, music, and transportation, the tech giant said. The framework doesn’t impose any limitations on the process of attaching specific sounds or combinations to any Alexa-generated responses and is entirely free to use.
The Seattle, Washington-based company is encouraging developers to take advantage of the new sound library going forward so as to make their skills more versatile and consequently drive their engagement rates, increasing their chances to earn significant revenue through Alexa Developer Rewards. The move is just the latest step in Amazon’s efforts to strengthen its artificial intelligence ecosystem which will soon be encompassing both headphones and smartwatches, as per the company’s previous announcements. By providing developers with a larger sound library, Amazon is hoping to help them diversify their portfolios and encourage them to experiment, hence also prompting users to give more Skills a go. Outside of supporting developers, the firm is presently pursuing some more targeted goals for Alexa, including live translation ambitions.
The Alexa Skills Kit sound library is already available for use to all developers and can be explored by referring to the banner below. As with any other Skills, developers are able to test their experimental creations using Amazon’s Echo smart speakers or the ASK developer console. Amazon is expected to continue incentivizing and supporting developers to create new apps for its AI assistant in order to maintain its leading position in the U.S. going forward. The newly introduced sound database is also likely to be expanded in the future, together with other Alexa development tools.
Alexa Sound Library