Amazon Smart Plug: Smart Home Power

Supposing you'd like to include your elderly lamp in your smart home setup, what would you do? As Amazon sees it, you should buy an Amazon Smart Plug, a device that plugs in to a wall outlet, then acts as a middleman between that power and the power it transfers to a 3rd-party device. This is all controlled by Alexa, albeit through wi-fi and a different device.

Amazon made a Smart Plug that's quite similar to what's previously been released by the folks at TP-Link. That is, wall outlet devices that either stop or allow power to transfer through to devices of all sorts, dependent on the commands they've been given.

This is one of a collection of devices which, when plugged in and activated for the first time, are included in your smart home setup via Alexa with great ease. When you plug this device in and detect it with your wi-fi-connected Alexa-infused device, Alexa will ask you what you want to rename it.

Amazon Smart Plug will cost users approximately $25 USD. It'll be shipping next month, and pre-orders start this afternoon. Amazon Smart Plug will be part of the smart home system that's been granted predictive AI with this week's bundle of updates to Alexa's overall smart system.

Predictive AI comes in the form of Alexa Hunches. That is, suggestions from Alexa based on your daily activities. One example is, when you're about to head to sleep, Alexa might remind you to lock the door. Now one must ask: is this too much power for Alexa to have over our everyday lives? Suppose she starts suggesting that you've forgotten to order more "product X" on Amazon – now, of course, you'll buy it there. When do we start to think this is normal? When do we start forgetting more things because we're depending on Alexa to remind us?