Alexa Now Lets You Store Birthdays and Other Details in Its Memory

Amazon unveiled a fresh capability for Alexa during a conference in France last week, enabling the smart assistant to act as a repository for small pieces of information. This feature, dubbed “Remember This,” is now being made available to users across the United States.

Here’s how it works: simply say, “Alexa, remember Brian’s birthday is May 11,” and Alexa will confirm with, “Okay. I will remember that Brian’s birthday is May 11.” Later, when you need to recall that detail, just ask, “Alexa, when is Brian’s birthday?” and Alexa will reply, “This is what you told me: Brian’s birthday is May 11.”

It may not inspire total confidence yet, but Alexa is still learning the ropes. For context, Amazon shared several additional uses for the Remember This feature in an email to TechCrunch earlier today.

This update represents a bit of catching up for Amazon’s smart assistant—Google Assistant has offered a similar function for some time. Still, it’s a convenient tool, far better than emailing yourself or jotting notes on paper scraps that are easily misplaced—both methods I’ve personally relied on.

Remembering birthdays and t-shirt sizes is part of a broader initiative to make Alexa smarter and more conversational. This effort includes context carryover, which leverages recent questions to inform answers to new ones. It’s all part of Amazon’s strategy to compete on contextual understanding, an area where Google’s assistant has traditionally excelled.