Can a smart-home assistant save your life in every life-threatening situation? Of course not. The voice assistant is only designed to react to your spoken commands and tune on to your favorite radio station. However, cases in which virtual helper aided its owners, helping them to avoid unfortunate and sometime even life-threatening situations, make a frequent appearance in the news reel.

Recently such a story came from a house in Tijeras, New Mexico, USA. The owned of the house Eduardo Barros had a heated argument with his girlfriend. The situation became more intense and turned from a domestic argument into an incident of domestic violence: from a verbal quarrel Eduardo Barros moved to physical action. In a fit of anger he even threatened to kill the girl. The outcome of this situation could have been deplorable, as the man had firearm which he could have used not at all for self-defence. However, the situation was saved by a smart-speaker. When the offender asked the victim whether she managed to call the police already, the virtual assistant recognised not a question but an order and called the police.

The police arrived just in time to save the girl, take her away into a safer place, and arrest Eduardo. The life-saver in this story was Amazon Alexa. Perhaps, instead of relying on fortunate occurrences, developer could seriously consider adding more features to react to violent situations.