Amazon rolls out Whisper mode for its smart assistant Alexa

During Amazon's Alexa event in August, the company introduced a plethora of new features for the voice assistant - one of which was called the "Whisper Mode." Just days after the launch, the new mode is now rolling out for all the Alexa users in the United States.

Amazon is also presenting a paper on the same at IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology in December. The reason why the company took the time to get the new functionality on Alexa is that whispering is tougher to decipher. While whispering you do not use the vocal cords, which makes it even more difficult.

Whisper Mode is basically something that has been requested by consumers in the past. The new mode will come in handy at a lot of instances. For example, if you wake up early in the morning before everyone else, and want to find out the latest news, you don't want Alexa shouting. This way you can whisper to Alexa and she can whisper back the answers to your queries. This could also make Google and Apple develop a similar feature for their respective AI assistants as well.

You can turn the Whisper Mode on/off using the Alexa app, and when enabled, the smart voice assistant will respond when the user whispers.

Besides, Amazon has also filed a patent for a new technology that would let Alexa analyze a user's voice to determine whether they are sick or depressed. The company will then sell products based on consumers' physical or emotional condition.

"For example, physical conditions such as sore throats and coughs may be determined based at least in part on a voice input from the user, and emotional conditions such as an excited emotional state or a sad emotional state may be determined based at least in part on voice input from a user," the patent says. "A cough or sniffle, or crying, may indicate that the user has a specific physical or emotional abnormality."