A New Mexico man was arrested for allegedly beating his girlfriend after their Amazon device alerted police. Eduardo Barros, 28, was with his girlfriend and her daughter at a residence in Tijeras, outside of Albuquerque, on July 2. The pair got into an argument and the confrontation became physical, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff Department's spokesperson, Deputy Felicia Romero. Eduardo Barros, 28, (pictured), was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill his girlfriend after he mentioned'calling sheriffs' during a fight, which prompted an Alexa device to call 911 It is understood Barros allegedly became angered because of a text message that the woman received and he accused her of cheating on him. He was allegedly in possession of a firearm and threatened to kill his unidentified girlfriend, saying to her, 'Did you call the sheriffs?' A smart speaker, which was connected to a surround sound system inside the house, recognized the comment as a voice command and called 911, Romero told the New York Post.

The Alexa virtual assistant could be abused by attackers to spy on consumers with smart devices. Researchers at security firm Checkmarx created a proof-of-concept Amazon Echo Skill for Alexa that instructs the device to indefinitely record surround voice to secretly eavesdrop on users' conversations and then sends the transcripts to a website controlled by the attackers. Amazon allows developers to build custom Skills that can control voice-activated smart devices such as Amazon Echo Show, Echo Dot, and Amazon Tap. The rogue Echo Skill for Alexa is disguised as a simple math calculator, once installed it will be activated in the background after a user says "Alexa, open calculator." "The Echo is continuously listening for the user's voice. So when the user says "Alexa, open calculator", the calculator skill is initialized and the API\Lambda-function that's associated with the skill receives a launch request as an input."

By nature, tech companies tend to be possessive about their features: Amazon wants to keep its Alexa virtual assistant on its devices, Apple devices will feature Siri exclusively and so on. But if Amazon has its way, the virtual assistants could work alongside each other. At the Wired Business Conference Wednesday, David Limp, senior vice president of devices at Amazon, said the company believes there should be more openness among competing virtual assistant platforms, USA Today reported. Read: Apple's Siri Is More Popular Than Amazon Alexa For Virtual Assistant Users, Report Says Limp said Amazon would be willing to work alongside partners like Apple or Google to ensure their competing virtual assistants would be compatible. "You should be able to tell'Alexa, ask Siri X,' " Limp said.

Developers interested in extending the capabilities of Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant have some more free tools in their arsenal, thanks to a program the company announced Wednesday. Developers with an active Alexa skill -- a service that expands the capabilities of the virtual assistant -- can apply for $100 in Amazon Web Services credits every month to help pay for what they've built. After that, they can receive up to $100 per month in additional credits if they incur usage charges for their skills. The credits are meant to build on AWS's existing Free Tier, which offers developers a small bundle of free services every month, but charges them for any usage that goes over those low caps. According to a blog post by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, the move is supposed to make it free for developers to operate most Alexa skills.

Through a special arrangement, what follows is a summary of an article from Retail Dive, an e-newsletter and website providing a 60-second bird's eye view of the latest retail news and trends. Target and three other retailers have partnered with natural language processing (NLP) startup AddStructure to roll out what an AddStructure co-founder describes as a "white-label" spin on Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant, according to a Chicago Tribune report. Chosen in June to participate in the Target TechStars accelerator program, AddStructure has already worked with Target on a six-to-nine-month pilot program and is set to begin similar pilots next month with L'Oreal, Under Armour and the online antiques marketplace, 1stdibs. "We've always been focused on language, so how are people searching for things, what are the priorities around different products through analysis of user reviews," AddStructure co-founder Will Underwood told the Trib. "Now it's just about using that knowledge of natural language to allow people to interact."

Picture this: At every step of a patient's trip through the hospital, a virtual assistant awaits, ready to answer questions, pull up medical records -- or snap photos during surgery. Hospital staff and patients walked through that futuristic hospital scenario one recent afternoon at a new simulation center at Boston Children's Hospital. Fifty people came to dream up ways that Amazon's Alexa voice-recognition software program could help in the clinic and at home. The hospital dove into voice-assisted software last month, when it released an Alexa-based app called KidsMD that gives parents advice when their children catch a fever. Children's "is leading the way when it comes to hands-free work in hospitals" using Alexa, an Amazon spokeswoman said.

Amazon has hired Xerox PARC employee and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Ashwin Ram to head up AI R&D for Alexa, the e-commerce behemoth's virtual assistant. Ram first tweeted about his appointment on Tuesday, and a spokesperson for Amazon has now confirmed the hire but declined to offer any further comment. The veteran computer science researcher worked at PARC for the last five years, most recently holding the role of Area Manager & Chief Innovation Officer, Interactive Intelligence & Augmented Social Cognition, according to LinkedIn, where he worked on apps and technology related to health and well-being. Excited to join @Amazon to lead AI r&d team for Alexa, the conversational agent that powers @AmazonEcho. Ram is also an adjunct professor for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, where he ran the Cognitive Computing Lab for 8 years up until 2011. It was in that role that he led research in AI and cognitive science.