The least surprising news of the week is Amazon’s apparently even longer delay in reinventing its Alexa voice assistant. According to Bloomberg, the premiere of the new Alexa – announced as a smarter and more efficient voice assistant based on artificial intelligence – has been postponed. Again. “A person familiar with the matter said Alexa AI teams were recently told the target date had been pushed back to 2025.” – writes Bloomberg.
The improved voice assistant, first announced last September, was expected to arrive this year, offering ChatGPT-style intelligence and more natural conversational interactions. However, earlier this summer, Fortune reported that the new Alexa may never be ready. Then, for the first time in half a decade, fall came and went without a big, flashy event for Amazon, and the rumors turned out to be true.
It seems we can’t have a smarter Alexa and a more capable Alexa.
In further evidence that the company is cutting back, Amazon has cut off access to the beta version of the new Alexa. It used to be that you could request access by saying “Alexa, let’s talk” to your Echo device. Now the assistant replies: “Chat is no longer available. For now, you can ask me questions or do things like set a timer, play music, turn on connected lights, and more.”
Bloomberg’s sources say that beta users who managed to chat in the chat weren’t impressed (I requested access several times, but to no avail). The responses were slow, sounded stilted and “weren’t that useful,” they said. Plus, the new Alexa is messing up smart home integration, hallucinating, and clearly trying to show off. Bloomberg reports:
One tester says the constant hallucinations aren’t always bad, just gratuitous, as if Alexa was trying to show off her newfound abilities. For example, if you previously asked Alexa which halftime show featured Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson, she might have answered the 2004 Super Bowl. Now it’s just as likely to present a long-winded addendum about the infamous wardrobe malfunction.
The challenge seems to be integrating large language models with the command and control methods used by today’s voice assistants. It seems we can’t have a smarter Alexa and a more capable Alexa. According to Bloomberg’s sources, using trained AI models allows Alexa to answer more complex questions, but increases the risk of failure to set a kitchen timer or control smart lighting.
The old Alexa may have its issues, but it can (mostly) reliably control my smart lights. No one asks for a digital assistant they can talk to at home but who won’t get up from the couch to turn off the lights. That’s why I have a husband.
Bloomberg reports that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has yet to convey to the company a compelling vision for an AI-powered Alexa. While he has said publicly, “We continue to change Alexa’s brain architecture…”, there is little information about what LLM-based Alexa will bring to millions of users – beyond the possibility of more natural conversation. More importantly, Amazon doesn’t seem to have yet proven it can do this without compromising features customers use every day.
No one asks for a digital assistant they can talk to but who won’t get up from the couch to turn off the lights.
While the company searches for its vision, Jassy has appointed a new head of Devices and Services, who will report to Alexa. Panos Panay has been with the company for a year, and Bloomberg reports that the former head of Microsoft’s Surface division has “focused on higher-quality design at the consumer gadgets group.”
As I wrote this week, Amazon’s past tact of building lots of cheap hardware at the expense of better software is part of the reason Alexa hasn’t gotten measurably smarter over the past decade. But with better hardware and a focus on leveraging Alexa’s strengths rather than simply turning it into a chatbot, the company could reclaim Jeff Bezos’ original vision for creating a Star Trek “computer.” But whatever the plan is for the new Alexa, it doesn’t look like it’s coming any time soon.
Credit : www.theverge.com
