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Amazon's Alexa now knows over 3000 skills

Amazon's voice assistant continues to gain skills, including new ones for the Food Network and GE appliances.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury
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The Amazon Echo, Tap and Echo Dot.

Chris Monroe/CNET

"Alexa, tell Geneva to preheat the oven to 350 degrees."

That's just one of Alexa's new skills. Amazon on Tuesday said its voice assistant has over 3000 "skills," with more on the way. That number has increased by 300 percent in the three months since June 2016, Amazon said in a release.

The Alexa Skills Kit and the Alexa Voice Service were released in June 2015 and were designed to enable home control and voice commands via the Amazon Echo. Amazon has since added the Echo Dot and the Echo Tap.

One of the most surprising companies to add voice support, given that the Echo is primarily a music device, is Sonos. The two companies said they would be working together to enable voice control of Sonos music systems in 2017.

On Tuesday, new Alexa skills for the Food Network and GE Appliances are available, Amazon said, with Yahoo Sports Fantasy Football, Bloomberg and What to Expect When Expecting coming by the end of September.

Amazon's Alexa assistant is one of several products vying to be the center of the connected home alongside the Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings and Google Home.