Can Alexa call 911?

No shade to all the other Alexa’s out there, but, in the homes of people across globe, one Alexa reigns supreme.

Amazon’s Alexa, a virtual assistant that’s been in circulation for nearly a decade now, is capable of handling a huge number of tasks. It can be asked about simple things like the weather, traffic conditions, and the news, and it can bring up playlists, individual songs, podcasts, or keep up a to-do list. It can also control smart devices and smart homes, and with each new year the handy assistant gains more capabilities.

The handy little device can even make phone calls, and consumers can carry on conversations via whichever Alexa device is set up in their home. There are limits to which conversations Alexa is capable of initiating, however, with one major gap restricting a vital resource.

Can Alexa make calls to 911?

Alexa can make calls to your friends, neighbors, family, and even dog sitters, but there’s one entity the virtual assistant won’t call: 911. This restriction may not hit users everywhere, but in the U.S., at least, the device isn’t capable of calling the emergency contact number.

But it is capable of initiating Amazon’s Emergency Assist addition, which came to the device in 2023, and allows a qualified representative to reach out to emergency services for the Alexa owner. Using Emergency Assist will connect the caller to an agent, who then serves as the go-between and can make a call to 911 for you.

It may seem like a lot of steps, but its saved lives in the past. A little boy was even lauded as a hero after he used Alexa’s Emergency Assist to connect with 911 after his grandmother had a heart attack. The process worked out well — despite his initial plea to reach 911 — and emergency services were contacted, arrived quickly, and managed to save his grandma.

Why can’t Alexa call 911?

Alexa’s inability to call 911, state-side, is due to an FCC rule dictating that 911-capable devices provide both location data and a callback number. While this is something Alexa could do, its not something Amazon allows the device to do, which means that no 911 calls can be made from any Alexa device.

Thankfully, with Alexa’s ability to connect to emergency services, it provides nearly the same service. Still, if you’re making a call to 911 and its a possibility for you, you should attempt to do so from a landline. This provides operators with a much better idea of what responding emergency services are headed into, and also provides an address in the instance that you’re unable to communicate that information.