Amazon Echo Show 5 Kids gets a space makeover and more fun features

Photo: Amazon

Amazon also introduced a new version of the Echo Show 5 Kids as part of its latest Alexa hardware lineup. The new model has the same faster performance and better sound quality as the standard Echo Show 5, but it has a space-themed design and a bunch of kid-friendly features.

The Echo Show 5 Kids also lets parents set limits and filters for their children’s use of Alexa. It also has a creative, generative AI feature called Create with Alexa. Kids can enjoy fun responses, jokes, homework help, and music without explicit lyrics. The device includes one year of Amazon Kids+, the company’s subscription service that offers “ad-free and age-appropriate” audiobooks, games, videos, and Alexa skills. The Amazon Echo Show Kids costs USD 100 (around CAD 135).

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Report: How Amazon plans to make Astro smarter

Photo: Amazon

Amazon is reportedly working on a secret AI robot project called Burnham, according to internal documents seen by Insider. Burnham would add intelligence and voice interaction to Astro, the company's smart home robot. Burnham would use large language models and other advanced AI to understand and respond to the context of a household. The documents say that Burnham would remember what it saw and understood and engage in Q&A dialogues and actions based on it.

For example, Burnham could alert the owner if it found a stove or a faucet left on. It could call emergency services if it saw someone fall and need help. It could help locate keys, check windows, and monitor kids’ activities. These are things that existing smart home devices can do, but they need multiple steps and devices. Astro with Burnham would do them with one device.

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Amazon reportedly plans to make a Spider-Man Noir series

Graphics: Marvel

Amazon has supposedly greenlit a live-action Spider-Man Noir series. The show will reportedly focus on "an older, grizzled superhero in 1930s New York City." This alternate version of the web-slinging hero first debuted in the 2009 Marvel comic series of the same name. The comic was set in 1933 as a freshly bitten Spidey navigates New York City's Depression-era criminal underworld. It's unclear if Nicolas Cage, who voiced the character in the 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, will come back for the movie. But the actor has said he wasn't asked to return for the upcoming animated sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

This series will be the second Sony-controlled Marvel project to come to Amazon after the upcoming Silk: Spider Society. Oren Uziel will write and executive-produce the show, with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse alumni Phil Lord, Amy Pascal, and Christopher Miller.

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Amazon greenlit a mini-series based on FTX crypto catastrophe

While we've heard about Apple's supposed plans for an FTX-based film, Amazon has already greenlit a series about FTX and its infamous co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Even if the real-world impacts of FTX's crash have yet to settle, Amazon is pushing forward with the mini-series and is working with Anthony and Joe Russo's AGBO production company. Amazon has also tapped Invasion co-creator Dave Weil to executive produce the unnamed eight-episode mini-series. 

The story will detail how Bankman-Fried co-founded FTX and went on to lead the company to a liquidity crisis that resulted in his ousting. There are no actors attached to the project yet, but Amazon is reportedly eyeing some of the actors the Russos worked with in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Specific details for the show's story are reportedly being sourced from "insider reporting" by a "number of journalists." But Amazon hasn't disclosed which journalists or newsrooms it's pulling from, and production is expected to kick off sometime next spring.

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