Amazon Readies Release Of Revamped Alexa AI – Report

Amazon is said to be finally readying the long-awaited release of its AI revamped Alexa personal assistant.

Reuters, citing three people familiar with the matter, reported that Amazon is set to release its much delayed Alexa generative AI voice service, and has scheduled a press event for later this month to preview it.

It was back in September 2023 when Amazon had publicly reacted to the growing competition from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Bard, by demonstrating its Alexa voice assistant upgraded with generative artificial intelligence capabilities.

AI Alexa

Amazon at the time said that its updated Alexa, should signal an end to Alexa’s usual robotic tone for the past decade, and allow for more natural sounding conversations.

But an actual launch of the upgraded Alexa was repeatedly pushed back, amid reports of internal concern over its quality.

Then in May 2024 it was again reported that Amazon planned to unveil the AI upgraded version of Alexa in 2024 using its own large language model, Titan, and would charge a monthly fee to offset the cost of the technology.

And then in June 2024 it was reported that Amazon was planning a major revamp of its decade-old Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service – “Classic” Alexa for free, and an AI-powered one for $5 or even $10 a month.

It came CEO Andy Jassy had reportedly taken a personal interest in seeing Alexa reinvigorated, after he became frustrated that Alexa didn’t know an answer about the live score of a sports game.

In an April 2024 letter to shareholders, Jassy had apparently promised a “more intelligent and capable Alexa,” without providing additional details.

Alexa event

Now Reuters has reported that on Wednesday Amazon has sent press invites to an event to be held on 26 February in New York featuring the head of its devices and services team, Panos Panay.

An Amazon spokesperson reportedly said the event is Alexa-focused, while declining to elaborate.

According to Reuters, the AI Alexa service will be able to respond to multiple prompts in sequence and, company executives have said, even act as an “agent” on behalf of users by taking actions for them without their direct involvement.

That contrasts with the current iteration, which generally handles only a single request at a time.

Executives have reportedly scheduled a meeting, known as a “Go/No-go,” for 14 February. There they will make a final decision on the “street readiness” of Alexa’s generative AI revamp, according to the people and an internal planning document seen by Reuters.

Amazon will rely, at least in part, on artificial intelligence software from startup Anthropic – in which it has invested $8 billion – to underpin the AI in Alexa, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Failed experiment?

The Alexa voice assistant has never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream for Amazon, and voice assistants like Alexa and Siri were overtaken by advanced AI models from different companies.

Previously, it was suggested that just about every plan to monetise Alexa had failed, with one former employee branding Alexa “a colossal failure of imagination,” and “a wasted opportunity.”

Since its launch in 2014, Amazon made huge investments in Alexa and at one point, Amazon had 5,000 people working on Alexa and Echo.

But Amazon has heavily restructured its Alexa division under Jassy.

In November 2023 Amazon had axed more jobs within its Alexa division, and also axed a number of unspecified initiatives within the unit.

Indeed, the cuts to the Alexa voice assistant division even prompted concern about the future of Echo devices and the Alexa voice assistant.

So much so that David Limp, who used to be Amazon’s senior vice president of Devices & Services – the division responsible for the Kindle, Echo hardware line and the Alexa personal assistant business – had to reassure concerned Alexa customers when Amazon implemented those job cuts.

But matters were not helped in August 2023, when David Limp announced he was stepping down as boss of Amazon’s Devices & Services unit. Limp is now CEO of Blue Origin.

He was replaced by Microsoft’s former product boss, Panos Panay.