One of the Amazon Echo's biggest problems at the moment is that it’s very much a single-user device.
Sure, anyone in your house can get it playing music from Spotify, but ask it to tell you what’s in your calendar and you’re limited to the calendar of just one person.
Now, in an interview with Time (via: TNW), Amazon has revealed that it’s spent over a year working on a form of Voice ID, which would identify which user is addressing Alexa and display information specific to them.
Echo problems
This multiple-user problem isn’t unique to Alexa, but since the Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot are made to be used by an entire household, they run into the problem far more than phone-based assistants like Siri, which are present on devices that are used by just a single person.
Google is likewise working on a solution to the same problem for its Google Home speaker, but it’s not clear what form this will take.
Although this Voice ID technology will be most useful in home-based devices, it could also be helpful in phones where it would reduce instances of a phone mistakenly overhearing someone else's wake command.
Amazon isn’t the first company to investigate this voice-fingerprinting technology. In February 2016 the bank HSBC launched voice recognition services in the UK for telephone banking as an additional security measure.
We were impressed by what Alexa is already able to do, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Supporting multiple accounts is a big, necessary step towards making the company’s smart speakers work for the whole household, rather than just their purchaser.
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