Amazon shares snapshot of what’s ahead for Alexa in 2021

Recalling some of the year's milestone moments of its virtual assistant Alexa, Amazon on Wednesday shared a snapshot of the upcoming features that will make it more interactive and useful for customers in 2021.

"We moved quickly to deliver features and solutions that fit the current needs of our customers' many of whom spent more time than ever at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are continually thinking through ways we can help our customers address their day-to-day challenges - no matter what those may be - and next year will be no different," Amazon wrote in a blog post.

What's coming ahead?

In 2021, Amazon says, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will make Alexa even more natural to interact with. The voice assistant will become more natural to interact with by automatically correcting mistakes via customer feedback and learning their preferences with interactive teaching such as what the customer means when they say things like "Alexa, it's cold in here."

Further, Alexa will be able to infer latent goals and what a customer may be trying to accomplish, allowing her to suggest relevant skills without the customer needing to know the skill name or repeat the same information across skills.

Moving ahead, Alexa-enabled devices will become even more proactive to understand customers' needs.

"We want our Alexa-enabled devices and services to create an experience that is proactive but not pushy, personal but also communal, both predictable and on-demand, and built with privacy at the foundation. In 2021, this will continue to be a big priority for us as we seek ways to ensure customers have the right balance of personalization and proactivity to power their unique Alexa experience."

As online video content consumption has significantly increased since the coronavirus pandemic, Alexa will make it even easier to find what the customer is most interested in. This can be anything from shopping for household items to discovering new music from their favorite artist or hearing about a new book from their favorite author.

To help customers stay connected and organized at home, Alexa will continue to provide more ways. Going into the new year, Alexa will make it even simpler to stay in touch, manage day-to-day family activities and emphasize the importance of wellness and mental health.

In 2020, even more people interacted with Alexa on-the-go compared to the previous year. Moving forward, Alexa will be making it easier than ever to navigate, stay connected, and be entertained in the vehicle so that customers can focus on the road ahead.

Last but not least, Amazon says it will focus on finding ways to make privacy and managing the Alexa experience even easier for the customers.

"Customer trust is the most valuable asset we have. Privacy and security are foundational and central to keeping the trust of our customers, which is why they are core to how we build and design every Echo device, and every Alexa feature. It is our responsibility to keep their information safe and provide them with transparency and control. "