Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. Social Media
  4. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Alexa can now read you tweets from your Twitter timeline

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

In some good news for Twitter addicts who also happen to own an Alexa device, Amazon’s virtual assistant can now read you tweets.

That’s not all, with Twitter’s new Alexa app, you no longer have to stare sullenly at your laptop screen while scrolling through your endless Twitter timeline because, well, Alexa will do it for you. Leaving you free to make a sandwich or browse Facebook instead — whatever floats your boat.

Recommended Videos

Alexa’s Twitter Reader skill allows you to listen to tweets from your home timeline, find out what’s trending, and hear top tweets and your notifications. Basically, your Amazon Echo, Tap, or Echo Dot can now do everything but post a tweet for you. Alexa will even read you back your own tweets, if you’re narcissistic like that.

In order to get started, you’ll first need to authenticate with your Twitter account. The voice commands that prompt Alexa to complete your Twitter requests are relatively simple. First and foremost, you’ll have to ask Alexa to launch the Twitter app by stating “Alexa, open Twitter.” Other commands are self-explanatory, such as “Alexa, ask Twitter has anyone retweeted me?,” “Alexa, ask Twitter what is happening?” and “Alexa, ask Twitter for my mentions?”

That’s just scratching the surface, though, as Alexa also allows you to dig a little deeper by requesting more specific information. Beyond current trends, you can also ask the virtual assistant what is happening in a particular location by stating something along the lines of “Alexa, ask Twitter for trends in New York.”

For everyone out there that has a more, shall we say, unconventional Twitter timeline, be advised: Alexa will censor any profanities within tweets, according to PC Mag.

Twitter has been promoting the live news and commentary side of its platform of late, making it a good fit for Alexa, which already offers the latest news headlines, including all the new tidbits from Digital Trends.

Saqib Shah
Saqib Shah
Former Contributor
Saqib Shah is a Twitter addict and film fan with an obsessive interest in pop culture trends. In his spare time he can be…
Topics
A new startup wants to fix the military’s working-dog shortage with cloning and gene editing
Promising pitch, plenty of unanswered questions about the dogs.
a new startup wants to fix the militarys working dog shortage with cloning and gene editing warhound featured image

Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.

Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).

Read more
AI can describe a picture, but it still struggles to understand blind users
A University of Maryland study finds that Be My AI often buries useful answers in lengthy descriptions, leaving blind users to work harder to get the information they need.
Blind Man using walking stick

AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.

The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.

Read more
Etsy cracks down on AI slop listings. Everyone else needs to take note.
Now every platform must decide what counts as handmade.
Etsy featured image

Platforms tend to shrug off AI clutter until it threatens what they sell. For Etsy, that thing is trust in the maker.

To protect that, Etsy has banned AI-generated how-to guides and listings made entirely by bots. Most sellers must show at least one unretouched photo of the item (via Etsy Seller Handbook).

Read more