Amazon and Ally Bank have created a new skill for the former’s AI-powered digital assistant Alexa. The skill brings a new personal finance feature for Alexa that’s powered by Ally Bank. The bank’s customers can now ask Alexa questions like how many hours will they need to work in order to purchase a house, car or even that vacation they’ve always wanted.
Alexa already has a plethora of skills that enable it to perform a wide variety of tasks, ranging from calling you an Uber to reading out the news and keep an eye on your bank account.
This feature will help users ascertain whether the thing they want to purchase is even worth the amount of time they will spend working in order to earn it. This can provide some much needed perspective to those who have a tendency to get trapped in the rat race just because their wants outweigh their needs.
The new feature is called CurrenSee. Users can start off by asking Alex to open Ally and tell them how much a product or experience costs in CurrenSee. Alexa will then ask them how much they make in a year and how many hours they work in a week. It will then calculate and inform the user precisely how many hours of work they will have to put in to purchase that product or experience.
This is an expansion of the existing partnership between Amazon and Ally Bank. The bank’s customers can already perform everyday banking tasks on Amazon’s Echo devices. They can keep an eye on account balances, recent transactions and deposits, check current interest rates, and even transfer money.
Filed in . Read more about Alexa, Amazon and Amazon Echo. Source: businessinsider