Amazon launches its first digital photo frame with built-in Alexa

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Amazon has released digital photo frames in the past, but this latest one is its first photo frame that comes with built-in Alexa. The appropriately named Alexa Photo Frame features a 10-inch high-definition anti-glare touchscreen set against soft-white matting and real wood to make it look like an ordinary photo frame at first glance. Its display has a semi-matte and anti-glare finish to make images look like actual prints rather than digital photos. It also senses ambient lighting levels so it can automatically adjust the screen brightness. 

The frame takes images from Amazon Photos, which you can use for free photo storage if you're a Prime member. Amazon says Alexa+ can pick the best available images among the ones you have stored on the service. It can make sure to show images where you're smiling or where the lighting looks right, for instance, or match the season you're in. For October, it can show images of your family in Halloween costumes from the previous year. And it can also recognize screenshots and receipts, so they won't be displayed on the frame. 

You'll be able to choose a specific person or people to feature on a frame, if you want certain frames to focus on them instead of drawing from a larger pool of images. Once you've chosen the subjects for a frame to focus on, their images will automatically sync and be added to the device's rotation as you take new ones. Amazon says that means "Grandma can see the latest pictures of the grandkids right away," but we still suggest being careful with the pictures you keep on Amazon Photos if you're syncing them with a frame you're giving away as a gift. It's also worth noting that friends and family will be able to add images directly to the device. 

Since the frame is powered by Alexa, you don't have to access it from your phone if you want to find specific images. You can simply tell the AI assistant through it: "Show me photos from our last trip to Italy" or "show the latest photos of the kids," and Alexa will find and display them for you. Of course, you can just as easily swipe through photos on the frame's touch screen. 

Alexa can also display images side-by-side if it detects common themes between them, such as your kid swimming in a pool at 10 years old next to another photo of them doing the same activity a few years later. Finally, you'll be able to add voice notes, such as memories from when you captured a photo, to the images displayed on the device. 

The Alexa Photo Frame is now available for $200 in Black or $230 in real Birch or Walnut wood frames. You'll get 90 days of free Alexa+ included with each device, but after that, you will have to get a Prime subscription to access the features that require Alexa+.