Amazon Delays AI-Powered Alexa Upgrade Amid Technical Challenges

Amazon has postponed the rollout of its AI-enhanced Alexa voice assistant to 2025, a significant setback in its race to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, according to Bloomberg. The delay underscores Amazon's challenges in modernizing Alexa's decade-old architecture, which relies on rigid command-response patterns rather than advanced language models.

Further reading: Alexa, Where's My Star Trek Computer?

LLMs are overrated

[sxpert]

Itâ(TM)s probably the âoeadvanced language modelâ going bonkers

Re:

[dbialac]

I mean don't you need a LLM to tell you what time it is, what the current temperature is, give you the forecast, to play music with less than average quality and set a timer or alarm?

Curious

[pr0t0]

Is the challenge monetizing it?

Most consumer AI is...

[MpVpRb]

...crap generators.
The tech shows great promise, and research groups like Alpha Fold are doing useful work, but investors want profits now.
Expect a tsunami of useless, annoying AI crap generators to be inflicted on us and the most common question to be..."How can I turn this off?"
Other critics use the word "slop", I like "crap", but will adapt if slop becomes the standard term

In other words

[peragrin]

The command response of Alexa performs better than the llm AI that canâ(TM)t understand logic and Amazon canâ(TM)t roll out the inferior product

Technical challenge

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Euphemism for "AI is kind of shit, actually".

Alexa has far greater issues after layoffs

[Somervillain]

Alexa started off great. My wife is a huge fan and early adopter and bought one for every room in the house. We probably have 3/4 of every iteration of Alexa device released in some room of the house...ranging from the good speakers to the cheap ones to every form of the Show (display). They worked pretty great. Voice recognition is what it is...quite hit or miss, but Alexa always responded and did it's best reliably. Then, perhaps coincidentally, after they started laying off people a few years ago, the services stopped working reliably. I will admit, there aren't a lot of ways layoffs directly could impact Alexa's daily response time, but I would guess they cut back on servers.

Now, Alexa just doesn't respond about half the time on old devices and ignores us maybe 1/5 of the time on their new devices. Other devices on our network are working great, so it's not my connection...their services just really went downhill. After 10 years of using Alexa, I have my Alexa voice perfected...a clear, loud annunciation...say her name, give a 2s pause...give command". "Alexa...temperature"...4 years ago, it would work 99% of the time. Now it's 50/50 on older devices and maybe 80-90% success on their most recent, largest, most powerful & expensive Echo Show. It used to work for my kids, but now it almost never gets it right on the first try...I've noticed its ability to understand me and my wife (we have newscaster-grade midwestern neutral accents) go down.

It's a cautionary tale about both Amazon and IOT.

Amazon will do their best to snag you then cut costs down the road...it's why they're so profitable. They did this with Amazon shopping. 10 years ago, you would be an idiot to shop anywhere but Amazon...their prices were insanely cheaper than Target, Home Depot, etc and their service was amazing...then once they started posting profits about 10 years ago...all the prices had risen across the board. Now Target, Micro Center, and Home Depot are often cheaper, but so many people don't even give them a chance if they can get it on Amazon. Amazon rarely has a cost advantage vs local retail these days. They hooked a MASSIVE segment of the American public. My wife and most people I know still think Amazon is automatically cheaper...they've hacked their brains....got them addicted...then raised prices to record profits.

Just with shopping, they did the same with Alexa. They delivered an amazing device and wowed customers with revolutionary new technology...had a massive hit...sold devices at a small loss...then once you're addicted and in the ecosystem, cut services, eliminated 3rd party integration, so you have to use their SHITTY app for shopping lists, for example (my favorite feature)...raised costs on new devices. But this is not just Amazon...

This is likely to happen for EVERY smart device. You buy it...they get their money and provide nice services at first...then reduce performance and reliability or just shut them down later on. It's why I don't buy smart devices unless they really really provide a good advantage. It's just something that will stop working 10 years down the road and I like to keep my stuff for a very long time.

Re: AI-Powered AI ..

[sxpert]

Or just go on some complotist bs rant

Just use AI

[alexru]

What are the challenges with modernizing their architecture? Just use AI, after all it is so great at coding.

The challenge that nobody wants it?

[blunttrauma]

Why would anyone want a AI powered wiretap in their house?