How to Get Alexa Working on My iOS App

Can I use Alexa voice recognition in my iOS and Android app?

The Alexa Voice Service allows you to embed Alexa - the digital assistant - in your mobile app. I don't believe there is any way to just use the voice recognition - that's certainly not what it is for.

But a few months ago they broke out some of the services used by Alexa into public services available via AWS (see here). Of these, note that Lex 'provides the advanced deep learning functionalities of automatic speech recognition (ASR) for converting speech to text, and NLU...'.
So that is what you are after.

As to how good it is, well, all I can say is that it is desiged to do what you are after and (given the emphasis that Amazon is putting on Alexa and Alexa's dependence on these services) I'm sure it is state-of-the-art and I would suggest that it is in a state of frequent improvement.

AVS/ASK for iOS/Android

For the Non-Companion Route (AVS App) , go to AVS App

Just for clarification, There are two different methods to communicate to Alexa.

Companion App

(You have a device (such as a smart speaker) that you want to add Alexa to. So, you build in support for AVS. Great! Now you need a way to authorize it and associate it with the user's account. This is the "companion app" approach. The companion app connects to your smart product and allows the user to login and authorize the speaker to use Alexa and connect to their Amazon account.)

• Mobile
  
  
  • Website

AVS App

(You don't have a device you need to authorize - instead you want to speak to Alexa from within your Android/Iphone application.)

Mobile

Amazon Alexa Skills Kit: How do you link with external app account / userId

I don't know why the original answer has been deleted but Amazon now lets you link an Alexa User with a user in your system. Here's the announcement.

How End Users Set Up Account Linking for a Skill

Users link their accounts using the Amazon Alexa app. Note that users
must use the app. There is no support for establishing the link solely
by voice.

Users normally start the process when initially enabling your skill in
the app:

1. In the Alexa app, the user enables the skill.

2. The app displays your login page right within the app, using the authorization URL you provide when registering your skill on the
   developer portal. When the companion app calls this URL, it includes
   state, client_id, and scope as query string parameters.

   • The state is used by the Alexa service during the account linking process. Your page needs to keep track of this value, as you must
     
     pass it back later.
   • The client_id is defined by you. Your login page can use this to determine that the request came from your Alexa skill.
   • The scope is an optional list of access scopes indicating the level of access requested. You define the set of scopes to support when
     enabling account linking for your skill.

3. The user logs in using their normal credentials for your site.

4. Your service authenticates the user and then generates an access token that uniquely identifies the user in your system.

5. Your service redirects the user to an Amazon-specific URL and passes along the state, access_token, and token_type in the URL
   fragment.

6. The Alexa service validates the returned information and then saves the access_token for the Alexa user.

At this point, the skill is enabled, the user’s Alexa account is
linked to the account in your service, and the skill is ready to be
used.

How to test alexa custom skills on alexa app before publishing?

Your Alexa Skills are automatically installed on your device where the registration device is done with the same developer account. Even before you publish a Skill you will find in the section Skill and Games of the app Alexa under the tab your Skill section Developers.

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