GE Appliances has announced that its range of kitchen appliances, including refrigerators, dishwashers, wall ovens, ranges, laundry and more, are now voice-controllable via Amazon's Alexa.
“Voice connectivity has a big role in the Internet of Things, as well as in the home,” said Liz VerSchure, vice president responsible for GE Appliances connected strategy. “Integrating our connected appliances with Alexa will help make consumers’ lives easier, more productive and a little more fun."
Last year, Amazon launched the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) and Alexa Voice Service (AVS), allowing developers to build Alexa skills or integrate Alexa directly into their hardware, product or service. Alexa is the brain behind Amazon Echo, a cloud-connected speaker that offers hands-free voice control for everything from music to weather and alarms.
The Alexa skill built for GE appliances and Monogram products has a unique name, which is "Geneva." This way, Alexa device owners can use and control their GE Appliances products by simply saying, "Alexa, tell Geneva I want hot water," which will tell the connected refrigerator to get hot water ready. A few other skills include:
"Alexa, tell Geneva to turn on Sabbath mode."
"Alexa, tell Geneva to preheat the oven to 350 degrees."
"Alexa, tell Geneva to set the oven timer for 10 minutes."
"Alexa, tell Geneva to set the water heater to 110 degrees."
"Alexa, ask Geneva if my laundry is clean."
"We're excited to work with GE Appliances to bring hands-free voice control to major appliances like refrigerators, ranges, dishwashers and more for the first time," said Charlie Kindel, Director, Amazon Alexa Smart Home. "One of our goals with Alexa is to enable voice control on every device within the home, and this collaboration gets us one step closer to achieving that. We can't wait for our Alexa customers to try it out."
Available now, the entire connected Monogram and GE Appliances suite, including Café and Profile products will integrate with all Alexa-enabled devices including Amazon Echo, Amazon Tap, Echo Dot and Amazon Fire TV. There will be more Alexa functionality coming soon, including the GE Appliances connected window air conditioners.