I’ve been talking to Alexa for over a decade now. One of the first and perhaps best chatbots has answered thousands of questions, played albums of songs, and turned on and off countless smart lights. It’s consistent, reliable, and increasingly unobtrusive.
That would all change this year.
Let’s rewind to September 2023, when outgoing Amazon hardware chief David Limp gave us a stunning demo of a brand new AI- and LLM-powered Alexa that sounded more human, remembered context, didn’t require a password, and could almost carry on a real conversation.
At the time, I called the demo “excellent and creepy,” but I was also looking forward to it. It’s not just that I have half a dozen Amazon Echo products in my home and still consult them to this day. Amazon was busy catching up with the AI chatbot of the moment, ChatGPT. Compared to the GPT models, OpenAI continues to slip into the latest ChatGPT, Alexa’s skills look outdated at best. ChatGPT is an assistant, while Alexa is merely a utility, like a voice-activated switch.
Since unveiling Alexa AI last year, Google has unveiled its powerful Gemini, and just last month, Apple introduced Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024, introducing, among other things, a smarter, more conversational, and natural-sounding Siri.
If Apple can successfully implement Siri, which features Apple Intelligence, into its top iPhones this fall, Siri could finally take over the leading position as digital assistant from, if not Google and OpenAI, then at least Amazon Alexa.
As things stand now, the odds appear to be in Apple’s favor.
Stand still
Since that launch, Limp has left Amazon. It increasingly seems like this is less Jeff Bezos’ Amazon (he left as CEO in 2021) and more new CEO Andy Jassy, who is clearly more focused on Amazon’s enterprise services, like AWS and the Amazon Prime business.
In Limp’s place is now Panos Panay – formerly of Microsoft – who is something of a hardware and software genius. Although it’s been months since Panay joined us, the normally talkative Panay has yet to give an interview or front an Amazon product launch. He’s been quiet, and when I asked Amazon if I could chat with Panay about the status of Amazon Alexa AI, they essentially said no.
It may feel like Amazon is backing away from a hands-on AI showdown with OpenAI, Google, and even Microsoft and its GPT-powered Copilot. After all, AI time is different than typical engineering development time. What used to take 18 months now takes six months, and if it’s a generative model update, the cycles are just three months. Waiting 10 months to unveil Alexa changes feels like standing still.
I’m looking for hints of Alexa updates everywhere I can find them, including in the new Echo Spot that launched this week. It’s a redesign of the original Bedside Clock, but now sacrifices half the screen to house a speaker. That audio element might play music, but it will also be used to deliver Alexa’s prompt responses.
Nowhere in the product press release is there any mention of AI or artificial intelligence. The description of Alexa on the Spot is essentially the same as on every other Echo device. Panay is conspicuously absent from the release, by the way. Not even a sizzle quote.
Amazon offers an update
Frustrated, I asked Amazon if they could tell me anything about the progress of the updated Alexa they’d promised for 2024. To my surprise, an Amazon spokesperson sent me this quote:
“Our vision for Alexa remains the same: to build the world’s best personal assistant. Generative AI presents a tremendous opportunity to make Alexa even better for our customers. We’ve already integrated Generative AI into several components of Alexa and are working hard to implement it at scale, across the more than half a billion ambient Alexa devices in homes around the world, to enable even more proactive, personalized, and trusted assistance for our customers. We’re excited about what we’re building and look forward to delivering it for our customers.”
This caught my attention: “We have already integrated generative AI into several components of Alexa.”
Wait a minute. You got that? The thing about Alexa that’s different from, say, Siri, is that instead of requiring a hefty OS update to change it, Alexa updates come constantly and are usually slipstreamed. Remember waking up one day and seeing that Alexa could tell you to “thank your driver” for delivering your Prime packages? Right. Those things just show up (as do your packages).
Amazon didn’t provide details on how we might spot these generative AI outbursts, but it’s clear to me that they haven’t yet reached the level of conversational generative AI.
At least Amazon recognizes that generative AI is still important and it is working on it.
Moreover, Amazon must act quickly if it wants Alexa to remain relevant in the vast and ever-changing AI landscape.