Amazon Echo adds "computer" as a wake word, to the delight of Star Trek fans

When the voice activated digital assistant was first introduced in 2014, it was dubbed as the Star Trek Computer for homes. This was because the voice activated ambient computer is similar to the voice interface on the famous starship Enterprise in the Star Trek series. Now to the amusement of Trekkies everywhere, Amazon has introduced “computer” as a wake word for the Echo, allowing fans to pretend as if they were in the Star Trek universe. By default, the Echo uses “Alexa” as the wake word. Echo users can change the wake word by using the Alexa application on their smartphones. With the update, Amazon supports four wake words, including “Alexa”, “Echo”, “Amazon” and “Computer.” Other voice activated digital assistants in the market, including Google Assistant , Microsoft Cortana and Siri by Apple do not have any setting to change the wake word. The Amazon Echo has been in the forefront of the home smart speaker product category. Amazon Echo and the Echo Dot topped the charts as the most sold items on Amazon in the 2016 holiday season. Google introduced the Google Home last year. High end smart speakers by Microsoft and LG in a tie up with premium audio equipment maker Harman Kardon, are expected over the course of 2017. Samsung S8 could feature a new voice assistant based on Viv , a next generation AI assistant by the team that made Siri. According to a report by Gartner, wireless speakers powered by intelligent assistants are expected to be a $2.1 billion market by 2020 .