Amazon’s Alexa will soon be able to detect when user is sick

Amazon is looking forward to push technology to the extent where a voice assistant will be able to figure out if the person is ill and offer some medicine.

A recent patent filed by Amazon shows that the firm might be looking for ways to make its voice assistant Alexa more aware of the owner’s physical or emotional state, such as if the person is sick, bored or excited, just by analyzing their speech.

The image filed in the patent demonstrates a user telling Alexa ‘I’m hungry’, while coughing and sniffling. The assistant determines the user having a sore throat and asks if she would like a recipe for a chicken soup. When the user declines, Alexa responds by saying, ‘Would you like to order cough drops with one-hour delivery’ to which the woman responds, ‘That would be awesome!’

Amazon Alexa creeps out owner by saying, “All I see is people dying”

With this innovation labeled as ‘Voice-Based Determination of Physical and Emotional Characteristics of Users’, Amazon could also target advertisements where, for instance, in this case ads for sore throat products could automatically be played to people who sound like they have a sore throat.

As described by The Telegraph, the other examples shows the user asking Alexa ‘What’s going on today?’ Alexa figures out that the user must be bored and asks if they are in mood for a movie. This Alexa version might also listen to users who are crying and identify them as going through an ‘emotional abnormality’.

This technology could make Alexa more human-like in the future, however, the patent does not clearly indicate that Amazon is working on any of the described features as of yet. It might be possible that this patent might never get past the drawing board.