Alexa was supposed to be smarter by now, more conversational, more intuitive – more like the artificial intelligence (AI) assistant of our sci-fi dreams.
That was the promise back in September, 2023, when Amazon announced that a series of upgrades for Alexa would roll out “in the coming months.” But the rollout only rolled down the calendar.
Almost a year and a half later, there is word that the upgrades will be announced on an Alexa-specific event on February 26, 2025. But there is also some inside information that the public release of the new Alexa is being pushed back by at least a month from that date, according to the Washington Post, citing information from an internal newsletter and an employee at Amazon who asked not to be named out of concern of losing their job.
The unveiling was bogged down by concerns over hallucinations, accuracy, and speed.
The planned AI updates were a response by Amazon to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other voice-activated AI tools. While ChatGPT and Siri have had upgrades since, there continues to be hiccups with the technology in general. Apple unplugged its news summarizer last January after it made several errors related to current events. Apple said it was working on improvements and would make the feature available again in the future.
In its 2023 announcement, Amazon gave an overview of how AI advances are enabling the company to pack more features into its devices. The Amazon Echo sits atop millions of coffee tables, nightstands, and other furniture in homes worldwide. Amazon’s then Senior Vice President of devices and services, David Limp, preformed a live demonstration of the new capabilities in front of a crowd of Amazon employees and the media at the company’s headquarters in Virginia showing off a more intuitive Alexa.
Amazon said, “over the last few years, we’ve often talked about how we’re living in a golden age of artificial intelligence (AI). Ideas that seemed like science fiction not so long ago are now a reality—and there’s no better example of that than Alexa.”
“What started as a sketch on a whiteboard has evolved into an entirely new computing paradigm—one that has fundamentally changed how people across the world interact with technology in their homes. Having passed half a billion devices sold, and with tens of millions of interactions every hour, Alexa has become part of the family in millions of households. We’ve always thought of Alexa as an evolving service, and we’ve been continuously improving it since the day we introduced it in 2014. A longstanding mission has been to make a conversation with Alexa as natural as talking to another human, and with the rapid development of generative AI, what we imagined is now well within reach. Today, we’re excited to share an early preview of what the future looks like.”
Amazon has spelled out what it is seeking to do with Alexa. “As we’ve always said, the most boring dinner party is one where nobody has an opinion—and, with this new LLM, Alexa will have a point of view, making conversations more engaging. Alexa can tell you which movies should have won an Oscar, celebrate with you when you answer a quiz question correctly, or write an enthusiastic note for you to send to congratulate a friend on their recent graduation.”
Amazon also addressed the issue of trustworthiness, pledging to “design experiences to protect customer’s privacy and security, and to give them control and transparency.”
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on May 31, 2023, issued a statement that the FTC and the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged Amazon with violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule) by storing children’s Alexa voice recordings and undermining parent’s deletion requests. Amazon paid a $25 million civil penalty as part of a settlement in that lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, WA.
