Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant seems to be everywhere. Since it was first announced in 2014 with the original Amazon Echo speaker, the voice assistant has gained thousands of new “skills” and comes in a variety of form factors – from miniature speakers to ones with a video camera and a touchscreen. Alexa has been integrated into a wide range of devices including cars, fridges, smartwatches, lights, and security cameras.
We’re down on the demo floor now, and we were hoping to try out the new AI-powered assistant. There are six rooms, one with a Fire TV and the rest with Echo Show 21 screens. But all the demos are being run by Amazon reps.
That’s according to Amazon’s new devices and service chief Panos Panay, who just took the stage at Amazon’s big Alexa event in New York City.
The engagement metrics he’s referencing are a little unclear, but he says customers used Amazon’s virtual assistant 20 percent more in 2024 than they did in 2023.
The show is set to start at 10AM ET. We’re in a (chilly) line outside, waiting to get live blogging. Follow along for all the big announcements.
A smarter Alexa, new Echo hardware, and a lot of Panos Panay. We’re pumped!
The custom Alexa voice assistant for BMW vehicles was initially announced in 2022, but progress has been slow in an attempt to build it around Amazon’s more capable LLM-powered Alexa.
Amazon says its “LLM-powered capabilities” will start rolling out to select BMW models this year that allow users to “plan trips and navigate more conversationally.”
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All the Matter-compatible devices you can buy, plus the latest on the smart home standard backed by Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung.
Jassy, from today’s Q3 2024 earnings call:
We continue to re-architect the brain of Alexa with a new set of foundation models that we’ll share with customers in the near future.
The supercharged Alexa was first announced in September 2023.
Ten years ago, Amazon imagined a future beyond apps — and it had the idea basically right. But the perfect ambient computer remains frustratingly far away.
The Echo ecosystem has seen its fair share of failures while trying to popularize Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant.
When dealing with an aging parent, Alexa was a great help — in both practical and emotionally important ways.
When Amazon launched its Alexa voice assistant, it envisioned a computer platform that could do anything for you. A decade later, the company is still trying to build it.
In another WSJ report about Amazon’s struggles to reinvent Alexa with AI, the newspaper says it’s now going backward:
In some tests, for example, it lost the ability to turn on the lights with 90%-plus reliability.
Merging the new with the old was always going to be a challenge. Amazon has now charged one of Alexa’s creators, Rohit Prasad, with solving this mess.
