Today, Amazon announced the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), a collection of self-service APIs and tools that make it fast and easy for developers to create new voice-driven capabilities for Alexa. With a few lines of code, developers can easily integrate existing web services with Alexa or, in just a few hours, they can build entirely new experiences designed around voice. No experience with speech recognition or natural language understanding is required—Amazon does all the work to hear, understand, and process the customer’s spoken request so you don’t have to. All of the code runs in the cloud — nothing is installed on any user device.

The easiest way to build a skill for Alexa is to use AWS Lambda, an innovative compute service that runs a developer’s code in response to triggers and automatically manages the compute resources in the AWS Cloud, so there is no need for a developer to provision or continuously run servers. Developers simply upload the code for the new Alexa skill they are creating, and AWS Lambda does the rest, executing the code in response to Alexa voice interactions and automatically managing the compute resources on the developer’s behalf.

Using a Lambda function for your service also eliminates some of the complexity around setting up and managing your own endpoint:

• You do not need to administer or manage any of the compute resources for your service.
• You do not need an SSL certificate.
• You do not need to verify that requests are coming from the Alexa service yourself. Access to execute your function is controlled by permissions within AWS instead.
• AWS Lambda runs your code only when you need it and scales with your usage, so there is no need to provision or continuously run servers.
• For most developers, the Lambda free tier is sufficient for the function supporting an Alexa skill. The first one million requests each month are free. Note that the Lambda free tier does not automatically expire, but is available indefinitely.

AWS Lambda supports code written in Node.js (JavaScript) and Java. You can copy JavaScript code directly into the inline code editor in the AWS Lambda console or upload it in a zip file. For basic testing, you can invoke your function manually by sending it JSON requests in the Lambda console.

In addition, Amazon announced today that the Alexa Voice Service (AVS), the same service that powers Amazon Echo, is now available to third party hardware makers who want to integrate Alexa into their devices—for free. For example, a Wi-Fi alarm clock maker can create an Alexa-enabled clock radio, so a customer can talk to Alexa as they wake up, asking “What’s the weather today?” or “What time is my first meeting?” Read the press release here.

Got an innovative idea for how voice technology can improve customers’ lives? The Alexa Fund was also announced today and will provide up to $100 million in investments to fuel voice technology innovation. Whether that’s creating new Alexa capabilities with the Alexa Skills Kit, building devices that use Alexa for new and novel voice experiences using the Alexa Voice Service, or something else entirely, if you have a visionary idea, Amazon would love to hear from you.

For more details about Alexa you can check out today’s announcements on the AWS blog and Amazon Appstore blog.