Amazon landed on “best of” lists Monday after it revealed its sense of humor in an Alexa Super Bowl ad. The tech giant spoofed its voice control application "fails" in a commercial called “Not everything makes the cut.” After it conveyed the true message that there are now Alexa-controlled microwave ovens, Amazon winked, showing voice control gone wrong: an actor requests a podcast from an electric toothbrush only to have the sound muffled inside the mouth; actor Harrison Ford is outplayed in a scene where his dog orders a palette of dog food by barking, repeatedly, at Alexa; a voice-activated hot tub scene recreates an event resembling the over-the-top audio and water experience of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas; and astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly are shown powering the Earth’s electrical grids off and on from the International Space Station using voice commands, an episode referred to as “the incident.”

Smart speakers are the most prevalent smart home controller, used by 35 percent of smart home owners, Parks Associates blogged Thursday. Five percent of U.S. broadband households use their smart speaker as a hub vs. 3 percent that use a home security system and 2 percent with independent control hubs. Most smart homeowners operate their devices individually, but voice control's rise and the growing number of connected devices in homes is nudging more toward centralized control, said analyst Dina Abdelrazik. Such homes average more than 10 devices, and voice is emerging as a key interface for managing them, she said. "A smartphone app may be sufficient for houses with just one device, but when people get their fourth or fifth product, using individual apps for each device creates friction."

Comcast Xfinity joined the Super Bowl spirit Thursday, blogging ways for X1 customers to use voice remotes while watching the game, including for smart home control. Xfinity Home customers with Philips Hue or LIFX lights can use voice commands to change light colors to match those of the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots, a Comcast spokesperson emailed. Lights turn yellow and blue when customers say, “Xfinity Home, go Rams,” and red and blue for the Patriots. The company informed customers of commands Sunday in an email, she said. X1 customers can get statistics from the sports app and see who’s at the front door via smart camera by issuing voice commands, blogged Bryan Kissinger, director-digital home product management. Commands include “Tom Brady vs Jared Goff” for quarterback stats, “Super Bowl” for pregame news and postgame highlights and wings recipes on YouTube, Kissinger said. Additional music commands tied to the Super Bowl: “Show me Maroon Five videos on YouTube” and “Play 'We Are the Champions'” when the game ends, he said.

A new British subsidiary of Vonage that supplies contact-center cloud services to Salesforce and others created a system and method to use Amazon Alexa devices and other virtual assistants to communicate with factory call centers and deliver enhanced, automated “consumer-facing” services through “end-to-end functionality,” said a patent application (20190028587) published Thursday at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. As virtual assistants “become more and more widespread, and particularly as they are applied to home control and home assistant functions,” they can become a “natural entry point for consumers to interact with enterprises,” filed NewVoiceMedia Jan. 22, naming Chief Scientist Ashley Unitt one of its two inventors along with Brian Galvin, a patent lawyer in suburban Seattle. Vonage bought NewVoiceMedia for $350 million cash in September. Virtual assistants can place phone calls on demand, but “they do not take advantage of information and capabilities available in contact centers widely in use in the art,” said the application. An “interface” lets devices communicate with one another “for services and functionality to be improved and automated,” it said. NewVoiceMedia didn’t comment Thursday.

Forty-three percent of U.S. broadband households say voice control is an important feature for their next smart TV or streaming media purchase, said a Tuesday Parks Associates report. “Consumers expect new connected entertainment products and services to offer voice as a control and search option,” said Parks analyst Craig Leslie, saying companies will increasingly use artificial intelligence as product differentiators. In early 2018, the average broadband home hosted 10.4 connected devices, including 8.6 connected CE devices; 55 percent of those surveyed found voice control of connected entertainment devices appealing, it said.

Pandora rolled out voice control, based on SoundHound's Houndify voice and conversational artificial intelligence platform, to select iOS and Android users, it said Tuesday, with general availability “coming soon.” Voice Mode is designed to be a more natural and conversational way for listeners to discover new music and enhance their experience in the mobile app, said the company. After using a Google-esque "Hey Pandora" wake phrase, users follow with a request to change stations, control volume, skip or pause music and other basic navigation commands. The voice mode uses natural language understanding technology to respond to requests based on users’ personal tastes, not just what’s popular, Pandora said. They can make open-ended requests such as “Play something different” or “play music for relaxing,” or request a specific artist, podcast or playlist, it said.

NPR estimates 53 million U.S. adults own at least one voice-activated smart speaker, and smart speakers owned through December increased 78 percent year over year, it said Monday. Edison Research canvassed 1,002 respondents by phone for NPR just after Christmas and found the average smart speaker home now owns 2.3 such devices, up 35 percent from an average 1.7 the same time last year, it said. Other findings: (1) 52 percent of all U.S. smart speaker owners report using their device daily; (2) an estimated 14 million people in the U.S. got their first smart speaker in 2018; (3) roughly 8 percent of the U.S. population took ownership of a smart speaker between Black Friday and New Year’s Eve.

LG is touting Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice control in its newest SmarThinQ smart washer and dryer debuting at CES. Users can issue voice commands to turn the appliances on or off, pause a load and monitor status, said the company. A smart pairing function in the dryer chooses the optimal setting for the drying cycle, it said, and the dual inverter heat pump dryer can run two loads at once, while drying a third at low temperature, it said.

A glitch with an Amazon Echo speaker giving a user access to another user's recordings was an "isolated incident," an Amazon spokesman emailed us about a media report a customer in Germany who asked to listen to Alexa recordings of his activities could access others' 1,700 audio files. “This was an unfortunate case of human error and an isolated incident," Amazon said. "We have resolved the issue with the two customers involved and have taken steps to further improve our processes. We were also in touch on a precautionary basis with the relevant regulatory authorities.”

EMarketer lowered 2019 projections for smart speaker buyers and shoppers, the researcher said Thursday, now estimating 27 percent of U.S. smart speaker users will use a device to make a purchase next year vs. the 31 percent previously projected. A small number of people use speakers for shopping, said the researcher, with voice commerce this year expected to reach $2.1 billion, or 0.4 percent of U.S e-commerce volume. By activity, 80 percent of smart speaker owners 14 and older will use the device next year for audio; 73 percent for inquiries and 35 percent for smart home control. Amazon’s share will drop below two-thirds of U.S. smart speaker users for the first time next year, said the report, predicting Alexa’s share at 63.3 percent, Google’s at 31 percent and others comprising 12 percent, with some users adopting more than one platform. For 2018, Alexa penetration is estimated at 66.6 percent, Google Assistant at 29.5 percent and other voice platform penetration at 8.3 percent. Next year in the U.S., 74.2 million people will use a smart speaker, said the report, up 15 percent over 2018; some 27 percent of U.S. adults will use one by year-end 2019.