Now Alexa can greet people from your Ring Doorbell Pro

Amazon announces that it will add Alexa to your Ring Video Doorbell Pro, allowing you to talk to people when they come to your house. The feature is called Greetings from Alexa, and it requires you to have a Ring Protect subscription, which starts at $ 3 a month. If you do, Alexa can ask your visitors what they want, and they can choose to leave a video recording as a message. If you are a delivery person, Alexa will be able to tell you where to drop off the packages, assuming the delivery person is willing to talk to your robotic doorbell.

Beyond automating the process of taking video messages and directing deliveries, it's unclear if Alexa will bring any additional functionality.

The company is also announcing a Quick Responses feature, which should work on most of its doorbells without the need for that subscription (though the company's cheapest doorbell, the $ 60 Ring Video Doorbell Wired, doesn't have that feature either). The function allows you to choose a predefined response, such as "we cannot open the door at the moment, but if you want to leave a message, you can do it now" or "leave the package outside. If you want to leave a message, you can do it now. Of course, some answers let the person at your door know that she will be there in just a minute.

Lastly, Amazon is also bringing a motion warning to some of its doorbells and cameras, which will audibly tell anyone around that Ring is recording if it detects motion.

All the new features can be turned on or off in the Ring app, so if you don't want Alexa to open the door for you, you can't turn the feature on. If we're adding new features to Ring doorbells, it would be great to see a contactless doorbell feature added (especially since most of these new features require a button press).

The announcements come when the company is coming under fire for working with law enforcement to provide images captured by Ring cameras and for trying to increase the cameras' appeal to privacy-focused users by testing encryption support for end to end.