Yahoo News Trekkies can now wake up their Amazon Echo by saying 'computer'
Amazon just quietly updated one of the most important parts of the Echo in a move that is sure to delight Star Trek fans everywhere.
The company added "computer" to the list of supported wake words for its Echo devices — no doubt a reference to the powerful voice-activated computer onboard the Starship Enterprise.
SEE ALSO: Hey, Siri: How'd you and every other digital assistant get its name?
It looks like Amazon has been rolling out the update slowly over the last few days, though the company hasn't said much about it beyond an update to its support page, which details how to change it via the Alexa app.
While Amazon has yet to officially confirm the origins of the new name, executives at the company have previously said the Enterprise's all-knowing computer served as the original inspiration for what eventually became Alexa. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is also a lifelong Star Trek fan — he was even given a cameo in Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond.
"Our vision is to create a voice-controlled computer in the cloud — Alexa — that can do exactly what the Star Trek computer did," David Limp, the senior vice president at Amazon who oversees Alexa, said during an appearance at Fortune's Brainstorm conference.
However, as Mashable noted previously, the company eventually opted for the name "Alexa" to serve as the primary wake word, though users could also change it to "Amazon" or "Echo."
So while Amazon is still a long way off from realizing its goal of an Echo as powerful as the mythical Star Trek computer, fans at least have a new way to geek out over Alexa's Trekkie-inspired roots.
h/t: Verge
