Alexa's question context

[jdeacon]

I read a few months ago (on Reddit) that Alexa had acquired some question context. But none of the examples worked for me. Now they do work (more often at least).

Q "Alexa who is Mitt Romney?"
A Description of him and his being Republican Party's nominee. (I don't really care but Obama was a bit too obvious.)
Q "Alexa who is his wife?"
A Correct answer
Q "Alexa, who are his children?"
A Correct answer (So the context is still Mitt Romney; "Who are her children?" doesn't work.)

Q "Alexa calculate 19 minus 7."
A 12
Q "Alexa calculate that multiplied by 3."
A (Yesterday) 36
A (Today) "Hmm, I'm not sure what you meant by that question."

[jwlv]

I just tried it on my Echo Dot v2, the questions about Mitt Romney, his wife, then his children.
It does work.

Perhaps it's a feature that's only available to US locations for now.

[strayfish]

Just tried it with Queen Elizabeth - successfully went through that same process all the way and then pushed it to grandchildren where it ran into the wall. I'm in the UK and my Echo's version is 5589. Haven't interrogated a Dot yet.

And now I have.
Dot1 (oldest but 2nd gen. Software version 571207720) managed the first two levels but not the 'children' question. It took a stab at it though, with a biological definition of 'child'.
Dot2 (later purchase, 2nd gen. Software version 575215620) couldn't answer the 'children' question and didn't try.

[StevenR]

It also appears to be able to hold multiple contexts. A good one to show this (which I found from https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5ksetg/alexa_has_context_now/) is to ask the following questions (I'm not including the responses):

How old is Barack Obama?
Who his his wife?
Where was he born?
Where was she born?

It correctly determines that "he" refers to Barack Obama and "she" refers to Michelle Obama.