Alexa Plus arrives with promise but many questions

The biggest surprise at the Amazon press conference last week was the lack of hardware announcements. Traditionally, Amazon announces dozens of new gadgets during his events, but this time Amazon spent 70 minutes on software. Specifically, Alexa Plus, are new generative AI-driven Alexa Voice Assistant. And that was exactly the right move.

In het afgelopen decennium heeft het bedrijf veel te veel geld besteed aan het bouwen van goedkope hardware voor Alexa die niemand echt leuk vindt, het ontwikkelen van thuisrobots en vliegende indoorcamera’s die niemand echt nodig heeft, en inspanningen verspillen aan mislukte manieren voor mensen om met Alexa te communiceren (de lus, de magnetron, de klok, de klok, de klok, de klok, de klok, de klok, de klok, de klok, de klok, de klok, de Clock, the clock, the nuclear technology itself.

Imagine what could have been if Amazon had focused on making Alexa good all this time and had focused money. To start with, we would be much closer to Jeff Bezos’ original vision of replication Rigid trait‘S’ computer ‘and much further away from what Alexa is essentially today, a very expensive timer.

But with the launch of Alexa Plus, Amazon has finally taken a big step in the direction of that goal. The voting assistant is “hundred percent architated again,” said Amazon’s head of devices and services, Panos Panay, in an interview with The edge. “Alexa had to get better. It had to grow. It had to come to the next level, “he said. “Our goal was not just to have a chatbot; It was to have Alexa done to get things done. ‘

According to the demos that Amazon has demonstrated, Alexa Plus conversation, proactive, is capable of reason and conclusion and can learn from the context. It is apparently much more capable than its predecessor – he lingers, if you prefer the devil you know.

But the new Alexa can plan a date, book a restaurant and text the babysitter. It can create a travel route and add it to everyone’s agenda, read your study guide and test your answers, remember your favorite movies and food, and find your smart devices and take action, Panay said during the event.

It is not only that Alexa has a whole series of new skills; It is also better to do everything it used to do, but without having to use precise phrasing or constantly repeat the word ‘Alexa’.

Now, instead of skills, we have experts who can tap into the various large language models of Alexa Slim to deliver to your requests, however you formulate them – from ordering food and turning on lights to tell you who has been to your door and what to cook for dinner. The company claims to have tens of thousands of integrations through APIs, as well as new “agentic experiences” that Navigate Alexa and fill web forms on your behalf to do things such as a cleaner or repairman.

As part of the new SoftwarePush, we are also Finally Getting a new renewed Alexa app, which will host Alexa Plus on your phone, and a new Alexa.com website where you can communicate with the assistant from the comfort of a keyboard-letting better input methods should be for the new multimodal possibilities of Alexa. All this could bring the voice assistant closer to his goal to be a personal assistant instead of just a household use.

This long -awaited laser focus on improving the core software product could be for the influence of Panay, which was installed shortly after the first attempt to launch the new Alexa in September 2023. With a background in hardware development, it is possible that he came in, took a look at the series from Middling to bad products in the ultrasound line-up and a stop order.

Panay told The edge That is his vision of new Echo -hardware products that people are passionate about and fall in love. “The design vision is a little more consistency in look and feel and … I believe in screens. I think they matter in a huge way. So you will see some investment there. “Shortly after the event, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy confirmed that” beautiful hardware “is coming this fall. Nobody has ever described current echo -hardware as ‘beautiful’.

The most likely reason for the intense effort to launch the new Alexa is, however, external pressure from people like Chatgpt from OpenAi, Gemini who crawls to Google Home and is slowly coming to Siri. For a decade, Amazon has participated as the “best” voting assistant largely because of its enormous interoperability. Alexa was able to work with almost anything – but that didn’t mean it always did.

Yet this new, smarter Alexa is still just a promise. The demos I saw were very on track, even though they happened live. Apart from a few interactions that I had with Alexa Plus, nobody had to try all the new possibilities and not until the end of March at the earliest. A footnote on the Alexa Plus page also indicates that it will not come at the same time, which says: “Some functions are under development and will be released in future updates.”

We still don’t really know what Alexa will do if it is in millions of houses. This is not your old Alexa. Amazon reached this transformation by rebuilding the voting assistant from the ground. According to Panay, there is nothing of the “classic” Alexa in it. “There was a way to do that – keep the old Alexa and have a new Alexa that does nothing else, but is a great conversationalist. But that seemed like it would miss the point, “he said.

Instead, Amazon has built a new voice assistant on fundamental LLMS and developed a way to integrate it with APIs to give LLM Alexa the opportunity to do everything that classic Alexa could. This structural change is why it took so long, Panay said.

“Take a timer,” he said. “A timer has moved from ‘Alexa, a timer for …’, to ‘Alexa, I cook a turkey’, and Alexa asks you,” Do you want me to set a timer? ” And she sets it for the right time for the size of your bird.

This brings me to the biggest question: will an Alexa powered by LLMS be safe to use in our smart houses, where it has access to our thermostats, our ovens, our door locks and other vital infrastructure in our houses? Panay says he is not afraid that Alexa Plus will hallucinate in people’s houses. But he said, “There is always a risk. I can’t say there will be no risk.”

This is probably the reason why we may not see all these new functions at the same time. “You need a level of accuracy in smart houses that is unparalleled, unprecedented in the industry. We have to lock the door when you ask, “he said. “We’ve done this for years, so we understand. How to manage the instructions, how you describe the models, how you ensure that the Alexa models are fundamentally trained for specific Smart Home scenarios, so that hallucinations do not happen. Take some time. Make sure it’s right. No function will be released unless we know it will bring you 100 percent there. “