Amazon Alexa Offers Hands-Free Access to 60,000 Recipes Cooking

Amazon Alexa wears many hats—fitness tracker, mood setter, life scheduler, trip planner, and now, sous chef. In partnership with Allrecipes, the digital assistant helps you plan breakfast, lunch, and dinner via hands-free access to 60,000 recipes.

"There is no need to tap, swipe, type, or squint to get the five-star results your family craves," Allrecipes said in a YouTube video description (watch below).

To enable the feature, simply open the Alexa mobile app, navigate to Menu > Skills > Allrecipes; created a new account or link to an existing one before asking Alexa to search and save favorite meals from the website.

Use just your voice to find step-by-step instructions by title, ingredients, or cooking time. Say "Alexa, ask Allrecipes for the Recipe of the Day," for instance. Or "Alexa, ask Allrecipes for an easy lasagna recipe."

Need ideas for how to create a meal using the three ingredients left in your fridge? Kids hungry for something other than meatloaf? Ask Alexa. She even broadcasts online ratings and reacts to personal needs like time limit.

Home chefs, meanwhile, can also tap into the artificial intelligence to control connected General Electric kitchen appliances—refrigerators, dishwashers, wall ovens, ranges, laundry machines—thanks to a recent partnership between GE and Amazon.

As of September 2016, Alexa boasted more than 3,000 skills—triple the amount it had just three months earlier.

Amazon Ordered to Refund Kids' In-App Purchases

Amazon must offer refunds to parents whose children made in-app purchases on Amazon devices without their permission, a federal judge recently ordered at the conclusion of an on-going civil trial.

A US District Court in Seattle issued the order in a case that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought against Amazon in 2014. The order requires Amazon to set up a claims process beginning early next year to alert parents of their eligibility for refunds, Reuters reported.

The court rejected the FTC's request for a US$26.5 million lump-sum payout, though it did agree with Amazon that that amount might have taken into account unauthorised purchases that children did not unwittingly made.

The original FTC complaint cited internal communications from Amazon employees when in-app purchases had first been introduced in December 2011. They wrote that the lack of a password requirement is "clearly causing problems for a large percentage of our customers."

The company first required passwords for purchases over US$20 in March 2012 and the Amazon Appstore now requires passwords for all in-app purchases.​​​

An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment on the ruling, now the latest of several court decisions that have required Amazon's rivals to reimburse similar purchases.

In 2014, Google agreed to refund up to US$19 million to customers whose children accidentally racked up in-app purchase charges via their Android devices. It later removed the word "free" from any app that included in-app purchases.

Facebook in July settled a class-action lawsuit covering users who made any kind of purchase through their Facebook accounts between February 2008 and March 2015. They can now request refunds for purchases they believe are unauthorised.