New Alexa delayed
Amazon made the first presentation of the new Alexa in September last year. It was said that this new version will be equipped with an artificial intelligence similar to ChatGPT and will be a more natural assistant that can interact with humans more fluently. But the new version is apparently not ready at all. In fact, Amazon has even cut off access to the beta version.
According to Bloomberg, users who accessed the beta version of the new Alexa were not very satisfied with their experience. In particular, users were disappointed that the assistant reacted slowly, produced delayed responses to commands, and sometimes tried to “show off” with unnecessary information during conversations. Additionally, the new Alexa disrupts smart home integrations and hallucinates.
He even has trouble turning the lights on and off.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has not clearly stated his vision for Alexa’s AI-powered future. Although Jassy’s public statements include sentences such as “We continue to redesign Alexa’s brain,” it remains unclear what this transformation will mean for users.
Under Jassy’s leadership, Amazon appointed Microsoft’s former Surface executive Panos Panay to head its devices and services department. With this new role of Panay, there is an expectation that Alexa will have a better hardware quality and will be developed by focusing on the basic tasks of the assistant. Amazon has managed to reach a wide user base by offering cheap hardware for years. However, deficiencies in software and artificial intelligence development have prevented Alexa from becoming smarter. The company has been trying to solve this problem for the last few years. But whatever the plans are for the new Alexa, it won’t be in our lives, at least not anytime soon.