Amazon's Alexa assistant is expanding its bag of tricks once again.
Amazon has confirmed that you can now send SMS text messages using Alexa. Simply ask Alexa to send a message to a contact and Alexa will figure out how to send it, whether that's using Amazon's own Alexa messaging or using SMS if the recipient doesn't have an Alexa device.
The bad news is that there is a catch here, which is that this feature currently only works when sending text messages with Android phones.
If you've got an Android phone with the Alexa app, you can able this feature by going into the Conversations tab of that app and then selecting Contacts > My Profile > Send SMS.
You can then ask Alexa to send a "message" and it'll try to send a message to the recipient's Alexa app, then go to SMS if that fails. If you'd like for Alexa to just send an SMS right away, you can ask it to send a "text message".
This feature is now available on Alexa devices that support calling and messaging. Amazon says that it's not available for iPhone users because Apple doesn't offer its messaging API to third-parties.
This sounds like a pretty nifty addition to Amazon's Alexa assistant. Sure, you can already use Google Assistant to text your friends, but this feature means that you've got another way to text someone if your phone is in the other room charging or something but you've got an Alexa device nearby.
