The House of?Alexa
Vaclav Vincalek
Technology entrepreneur, CTO and technology advisor for startups and fast-growing companies. Creating Strategic options with Technology.
The wait is over. Amazon introduced Alexa+. Everything you were ever hoping to make your life easy, or at least easier, is now here.
The press was happy to report?—?Amazon debuts new Alexa voice assistant with AI overhaul.
And the Amazon marketing team went into overdrive:
It wasn’t that long ago, actually just about 4 months ago, when I wrote the Alexa’s Identity Crisis post. At that time the situation at that division of Amazon didn’t look that great. Amazon Echo (the device) with Alexa has been around since 2014 and since then, it has lost billions of dollars.
Somehow the premise of a simple voice command starting with the word ‘Alexa’ to be followed up with ‘play music’, ‘buy me dog food on Amazon’ or ‘dim the light’, didn’t catch on.
Actually, the opposite happened. People would get angry when talking with Alexa?—?‘I get unreasonably angry when she tries to suggest something, who fucking asked Alexa just set my timer for my god damn sausage!’ The other devices didn’t do much better either. It would seem that talking to computers is just not that popular.
The team at Amazon begs to differ.
First of all it is no longer just ‘Alexa’. It is ‘she Alexa’ and it is all about AI?—?‘Powered by generative AI, Alexa+ is your new personal AI assistant that gets things done?—?she’s smarter, more conversational, more capable, and free with Prime.’
I’ll leave it up to my readers to decide if they like it or not. In my opinion, it is an unwise choice to anthropomorphise computers, as it leads people to contemplate a future where people coexist with new, AI civilization, define software as having a soul, or conduct research into AI welfare. In a few years, we will read this in disbelief.
So, now that we have Alexa+ (she/her) everything will be groovy in our household.
The hope is that after advancements in the Large Language Models (LLM) e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Llama or the dark horse DeepSeek, we can achieve more natural conversation with the machine. That’s one promise from Amazon. ‘Whether you’re speaking in half-formed thoughts, using colloquial expressions, or exploring complex ideas, Alexa+ understands what you mean, and responds like a trusted assistant. It feels less like interacting with technology, and more like engaging with an insightful friend.’
Alexa+ will be able to play music, order groceries, and arrange for food delivery or tickets. All that will be done either through Amazon’s own services (Amazon Music or Whole Foods Market) or through 3rd party service providers (Apple Music, Uber Eats, Ticketmaster). It will even be able to find a repairman for your broken oven.
But the magic comes when you start personalizing Alexa+. As Amazon puts it ‘The new Alexa is highly personalized?—?and gives you opportunities to personalize further.’ It has these magical abilities ‘She knows what you’ve bought, what you’ve listened to, the videos you’ve watched, the address you ship things to, and how you like to pay?—?but you can also ask her to remember things that will make the experience more useful for you.’
You can also confide in it. ‘You can tell her things like family recipes, important dates, facts, dietary preferences, and more?—?and she can apply that knowledge to take useful action’ which might result in this personalization breakthrough. ‘For example, if you are planning a dinner for the family, Alexa+ can remember that you love pizza, your daughter is vegetarian, and your partner is gluten-free, to suggest a recipe or restaurant.’
And this is not even close to covering the magic.
I guess that Amazon is saying that we should install its Big Sister which will start controlling our lives. But that’s just the beginning. It will get much better.
Alexa+ has the potential to start raising your children. I am sure that you did encounter this problem when raising the little rascals. ‘Tired of nagging your kids to do their chores or have details you need to share when your family gets home? Fortunately, Alexa+ is here to help.’
Just say ‘Alexa, when you see Dan, remind him it’s his turn to walk the dog.’ While you are busy with your life, Alexa+ has an extension called Amazon Kids+ which will provide interactive learning, create bedtime stories or will allow you to listen to what they are doing in their rooms while you are not there. Handy from when they were born to late teens.
Luckily, the goodness of Alexa+ is not just for you and your family. Since Alexa+ will have access to your email, calendar and contact list, you will be able to ‘brainstorm gift ideas for a friend or family member just by sharing their interests, and then use Alexa+ to quickly purchase your items on Amazon.com.’ Amazon should call it Amazing Alexa.
Reading it through the announcements, it is impossible not to feel the excitement of the moment, like ‘Customers have long told us that they and their families love Alexa’s personality.’ And was it because of this love, Amazon was losing billions of dollars when nobody was buying it?
Don’t get me wrong. I admire the engineering and dedication of the team to pull something like this together. I really do. When you go through the list of all the things the technology will be able to do, and how it will integrate with things and service around us, it is an accomplishment.
Putting aside for a moment the creepiness of your every move being monitored and reported back to Amazon, I just don’t know if this voice interface?—?regardless of how sophisticated it is, will be easier to use than the keyboard, the phone, the mouse or the tablet. Are you ready to have never ending conversations just about?… everything? That’s my recurrent question about a pattern which?—?so far?—?has had a hard time delivering on the marketing hype.