Alexa can now act proactively on her own

The Amazon wizard can now turn on the robot vacuum cleaner or turn off the smart lights on its own. Yes, you heard it right.

Amazon announced last September, which would soon be releasing an update that would allow Alexa to act with the desire she had on the behavior of your connected devices at home: turning off a smart light bulb in a room long after you’ve gone to bed, for example. Typically, Hunches works by allowing Alexa to only suggest solutions to these detected problems. But now, Alexa users can choose to allow the smart wizard to just do the thing.

Premises are enabled by default, although Alexa will tell you how to turn off the feature after explaining your first hunch. To access your Hunches preferences, open the Alexa app i select “more” from the menu at the bottom of the screen. Select configuration, scroll down and click Hunches.

It was especially interesting to me, the owner of a connected coffee maker. Surely, I thought, this has the potential to be terribly twisted in case Alexa becomes naughty and starts brewing coffee the next morning at midnight, simply running out of my coffee supply.

But as of today, the feature is limited to smart locks, lights, plugs and thermostats. However, if you have another device connected, the spokesman said users “can start receiving Alexa Hunches depending on how you normally use your connected devices.”

For now, apparently, my coffee is safe. So help me if this robot starts to slowly reduce what’s left of my sanity.