Amazon has rolled out a new feature for Alexa that can make sure you hear what the voice assistant says even while the TV's on or while people are talking. According to The Verge, the new feature called Adaptive Volume will make Alexa speak louder if it detects a lot of ambient noise. The goal, the company told the publication, is for the user to be able to hear the voice assistant's responses over the noise in your home or office. The company says that it's only available for US customers at the moment. According to the company, the mode is meant to make sure that you can still hear Alexa’s responses over any background noise (like the sound of a dishwasher, people talking, or music playing on another device). Amazon says that the feature can be activated by saying “Alexa, turn on adaptive volume.”

Amazon doesn’t mention adaptive volume working in the opposite direction, becoming quieter if there’s no background noise, but there are other ways to reduce the volume dynamically. One of them is Whisper Mode, where Alexa will whisper its response if you talk to it quietly. As this relaxing video points out, you can activate the mode by asking Alexa to “turn on whisper mode.”

It’s worth noting that the Adaptive Volume feature isn’t the same as the spherical Echo fourth gen’s adaptive sound, which uses the device’s microphones to tune music to sound better in your specific room. This also isn’t the first time we’ve seen a smart assistant try to adapt its volume to the user’s environment — Google Nest’s Ambient IQ promises to do something similar for spoken word content or assistant responses.

This is not the first smart speaker that adapts to the user’s environment. Google Nest has an Ambient IQ feature that allows it to respond according to the ambient noise.