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Examples of voice assistants are Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. These services can be used to power a number of different types of devices, such as speakers, home robots, and home automation devices. What Can Alexa Do? In case you haven’t experienced a voice-first device with its voice assistant, consider some of what Amazon’s Alexa service can do. When you talk to an Alexa-enabled device like Amazon Echo, you start by saying the wake word (Alexa), so it knows you want to interact with it. You can ask it for the time, for weather reports, to play music from various music services, to answer simple ques- tions using Wikipedia and other websites, and to control smart home devices, such as lights and your thermostat. You can also ask it for jokes, play simple games like Twenty Questions, convert units, and many other things. A device like Amazon Echo needs to be plugged into a power out- let and set up to access your Wi-Fi network. That’s because it’s a cloud-based system, getting its intelligence from Amazon’s serv- ices. It can’t run without an internet connection (except as a Bluetooth speaker).11 Devices like Google Home and Apple’s HomePod work in much the same way. You’ll find more details about those in Chapter 2. Overview of Platforms As of the first half of 2018, the major software platforms for voice assistants were Alexa from Amazon, Siri from Apple, Google Assistant from Google, and Cortana from Microsoft.12 These serv- ices run on several different hardware devices, with new hardware options being released from time to time. Here are the current voice-first devices for each platform: Amazon’s Alexa: Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus, Echo Spot, Echo Show, Echo Look, and the Sonos One smart speaker.13 Google Assistant: Google Home, Google Home Mini, Google Home Max,14 and third-party devices like Lenovo Smart Display.15 4 Siri, Alexa, and Other Digital Assistants