Alexa for Business...

[Spookyville]

Opening Pandora's box here but here goes! Anyone out there using Alexa in their school on the admin side? Had an inquiry from the SLT to investigate using it for adding things to other SLT members list etc.. 

 

I should qualify that I use Alexa extensively at home, and it can be quite useful but it often takes 2 or 3 attempts when asking her to turn a light on. So I know the drawbacks in reality (and the frustrations!) Personally I am skeptical of it in a work environment but interested if anyone out there already took the plunge and either regretted it or not

 

[chaplic]

it's really, really unfriendly for any sort of corporate style internet. If you can put it on a guest wifi with no captive portal and any-any outgoing it's fine.

[dhicks]

2 hours ago, Spookyville said:

Had an inquiry from the SLT to investigate using it for adding things to other SLT members list etc..

As pointed out already, Alexa might not be the best thing in a corporate / education environment. Google and/or Microsoft's AI offerings might be more suitible - we're looking at how we might use Google's Gemini, which might include a voice assistant type feature. My guess is that microphone placement is going to be a bit tricky, although might be more do-able in a controlled office environment rather than a classroom.

[dmj]

16 minutes ago, dhicks said:

As pointed out already, Alexa might not be the best thing in a corporate / education environment. Google and/or Microsoft's AI offerings might be more suitible - we're looking at how we might use Google's Gemini, which might include a voice assistant type feature. My guess is that microphone placement is going to be a bit tricky, although might be more do-able in a controlled office environment rather than a classroom.

We're using gemini for this type of thing. It integrates right into your google drive and uses voice so you can say, for example; "add a meeting at 14:30 and invite x,y,x booking room 1" and it will just go off and do it. 

This is on a business Google Workspace, so not sure what 'level' you need for Education, I can't imagine it's on the free tier. 

 

edit: Infact, just to test it out I took a photo of a load of written down meeting events, uploaded the photo to gemini and said "add to calendar" volia

 

Edited June 24, 2025 by dmj

[dhicks]

8 minutes ago, dmj said:

We're using gemini for this type of thing.

Ah ha. We're just looking at the licesning costs for a whole-school license, which I'm pretty sure includes most if not all features available. Is this people using the voice assistant from in front of desktop machines, with some kind of built-in microphone, or do you have specific microphones / devices of some kind? Most of our classroom and office machines are reasonably new all-in-one desktops, with a few NUC-alikes - most of our devices should have a small built-in array mic or a mic ona webcam.

[dmj]

17 minutes ago, dhicks said:

Ah ha. We're just looking at the licesning costs for a whole-school license, which I'm pretty sure includes most if not all features available. Is this people using the voice assistant from in front of desktop machines, with some kind of built-in microphone, or do you have specific microphones / devices of some kind? Most of our classroom and office machines are reasonably new all-in-one desktops, with a few NUC-alikes - most of our devices should have a small built-in array mic or a mic ona webcam.

It's all macbooks/laptops in offices. I'd be interested to hear what the license cost is for gemini in schools. AFAIK Google just upped all our workspace licenses about 6mo ago and then added it "for free" (this is business plus)

[Spookyville]

So the consensus is Gemini? We are a 365/Teams environment so guessing whatever links to MS and offers the functionality of Alexa..

[NegativeKillDeath]

Curious about Gemini in business, does it "fingerprint" your voice like the consumer version can to make sure you are only interacting with resources you should be able to access. I am imagining kids in a class shouting out "delete all meetings" at the teacher to wipe the calendar. I remember seeing a streamer doing a cooking stream and a member of chat using text to speech to ask his alexa to reveal its location and the Alexa promptly read out his address. 

[PotNoodleTech]

Alexa is an absoloute minefield of data protection etc.

 

If they made a version designed for business or education then it would be better but they don't so what you get is a home version with no admin controls that will literally eavesdrop on every conversation it can hear which is a massive data breech waiting to happen.

 

Realistically only Office365 Copilot and Google Gemini are the only ones giuarunteed to be safe, as they've been vetted and adjusted for educational establisments to comply with our data protection regs etc.

[dhicks]

2 hours ago, Spookyville said:

We are a 365/Teams environment so guessing whatever links to MS and offers the functionality of Alexa..

CoPilot, then, in your case. I think, similar to Google's Gemini, you get a certain amount of functionality for free / included in a standard license, you can pay to license further functionality. A quick Google search suggests around £23 per user per month for the full licnese, which could get pricey for all staff in a school, so maybe start with a smaller, more select group of users, and/or discuss with whoever handles your Microsoft licensing to see if there is any bulk / schools pricing.

[dmj]

2 hours ago, NegativeKillDeath said:

Curious about Gemini in business, does it "fingerprint" your voice like the consumer version can to make sure you are only interacting with resources you should be able to access. I am imagining kids in a class shouting out "delete all meetings" at the teacher to wipe the calendar. I remember seeing a streamer doing a cooking stream and a member of chat using text to speech to ask his alexa to reveal its location and the Alexa promptly read out his address. 

No it doesn't fingerprint your voice AFAIK, it uses the OAuth from the web application for authentication - so I would imagine a classroom with kids shouting out "give joe bloggs 10/10 for all assignments in google drive" it would likely just do it. 

[dmj]

1 minute ago, dmj said:

No it doesn't fingerprint your voice AFAIK, it uses the OAuth from the web application for authentication - so I would imagine a classroom with kids shouting out "give joe bloggs 10/10 for all assignments in google drive" it would likely just do it. 

actually, It's not all that bad - you do have to be at the KB to press "ENTER".

I tried to tell gemini to execute the command and it wouldn't. It appears the voice to speech is a "different" (unconnected) AI, so it still requires the user at the KB. 

[andy_b]

1 hour ago, dhicks said:

CoPilot, then, in your case. I think, similar to Google's Gemini, you get a certain amount of functionality for free / included in a standard license, you can pay to license further functionality. A quick Google search suggests around £23 per user per month for the full licnese, which could get pricey for all staff in a school, so maybe start with a smaller, more select group of users, and/or discuss with whoever handles your Microsoft licensing to see if there is any bulk / schools pricing.

plus minimum of A3 license.

[Spookyville]

17 minutes ago, andy_b said:

plus minimum of A3 license.

Yeah we have A3/A5 licences so all good 

[dmj]

Just seen this @dhicks

https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2025/06/the-gemini-app-is-now-available-for-all-google-workspace-for-education-users.html?m=1