Amazon’s Alexa may soon get Voice ID for recognising different voices

Amazon is reportedly trying to enhance its Alexa voice assistant with a new voice-recognition capability.

The company wants Alexa to be able to recognise individual voices, according to a report from Time, meaning your Echo or Alexa-enabled device would be able to determine who is speaking to it and presumably tailor responses to that person. Also, it could limit certain commands to a specific voice. So, if an account holder wants to purchase goods on Amazon, his or her voice will be identified and allowed to do so.

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Alexa already supports the ability for users to manually change accounts and input PIN verification for purchases, but identification via voice would be a much-welcomed feature that speeds up and simplifies the process. Amazon has been working on this new voice-recognition feature, internally known as Voice ID, since summer 2015 and is already finished with the technical aspects of development.

The company is reportedly only waiting to roll out the feature to Alexa users because it has to iron out any privacy kinks. We’ll report back when Voice ID officially debuts. In the meantime, check out Pocket-lint’s Alexa guide for more tips and tricks you can do with the service.