Amazon's Alexa can now act on its hunches to do tasks for you

Amazon's new feature called "hunches" allows Alexa to proactively complete tasks around the house like automatically turn off your lights - all based on your past habits and requests.

"Alexa has been able to sense these habits and ask about them since 2018 — the company calls them "hunches" — but before this update, Alexa would ask permission before acting on something like lowering the thermostat before you went to bed. If the new proactive hunches are enabled, though, Alexa will skip asking for permission for a task and just do it," the Verge reported.

Alexa hunches are not new and are already used by many Alexa device owners.

While proactive hunches seem like they could make Alexa a lot more useful, having granular controls over what Alexa can automatically act on will be important, the report said.

Amazon is also rolling out its Guard Plus security subscription service along with new Alexa abilities. The service alerts one if Alexa picks up on certain types of sounds in their home and offers access to human agents who can call emergency services on their behalf.

Users can sign up for Guard Plus in the Alexa app which costs $4.99 per month.

Another feature that Amazon has also rolled out is an energy dashboard to the Alexa app that can monitor and estimate how much power compatible devices connected to Alexa use if their manufacturers support it.

Amazon has a whole list of compatible products on its site about the new dashboard and it includes anything from TVs to water heaters.