Amazon has reportedly postponed the launch date of its ‘smarter’ Alexa once again. Previously tipped to launch this year, a report by Bloomberg has said that the e-commerce giant has pushed the debut of its revamped voice assistant as it is unable to solve simple tasks like controlling the smart light.
Citing sources, Bloomberg reports that “Alexa AI teams were recently told that their target deadline had been moved into 2025.” It claims that the new Alexa – touted to be smarter, more capable AI-powered voice assistant – was supposed to launch at the October 17 event but the plans were cancelled, according to internal documents.
The report also says that while smarter Alexa can use pre-trained AI models to complex questions, it is more likely to fail at setting timer or controlling smart lights. The AI assistant is also said to be ‘hallucinating’ – a term used to denote the phenomena wherein an AI model provides factually incorrect answers with ‘confidence’.
What Amazon has to say
As per the report, Alexa’s conversational abilities have improved, however, top engineers and testers claim that Alexa can still provide superfluous information. The company said that its vision remains to build Alexa into the world’s best personal assistant.
“We have already integrated generative AI into different components of Alexa, and are working hard on implementation at scale—in the over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices already in homes around the world—to enable even more proactive, personal, and trusted assistance for our customers,” said spokesperson Kristy Schmidt.
Amazon CEO says Alexa to have new AI models
At earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has hinted at an upcoming upgrade to the Alexa voice assistant, promising a more proactive and capable AI experience. He said that apart from answering questions and summarising information, Alexa can also take actions on behalf of users.
“I think that the next generation of these assistants and generative AI applications will be better at not just answering questions and summarising, indexing, and aggregating data, but also taking actions. And you can imagine us being pretty good at that with Alexa,” he said during Amazon’s Q3 2024 earnings call.
“We continue to re-architect the brain of Alexa with a new set of foundation models that we’ll share with customers in the near future,” he added.
Citing sources, Bloomberg reports that “Alexa AI teams were recently told that their target deadline had been moved into 2025.” It claims that the new Alexa – touted to be smarter, more capable AI-powered voice assistant – was supposed to launch at the October 17 event but the plans were cancelled, according to internal documents.
The report also says that while smarter Alexa can use pre-trained AI models to complex questions, it is more likely to fail at setting timer or controlling smart lights. The AI assistant is also said to be ‘hallucinating’ – a term used to denote the phenomena wherein an AI model provides factually incorrect answers with ‘confidence’.
What Amazon has to say
As per the report, Alexa’s conversational abilities have improved, however, top engineers and testers claim that Alexa can still provide superfluous information. The company said that its vision remains to build Alexa into the world’s best personal assistant.
“We have already integrated generative AI into different components of Alexa, and are working hard on implementation at scale—in the over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices already in homes around the world—to enable even more proactive, personal, and trusted assistance for our customers,” said spokesperson Kristy Schmidt.
Amazon CEO says Alexa to have new AI models
At earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has hinted at an upcoming upgrade to the Alexa voice assistant, promising a more proactive and capable AI experience. He said that apart from answering questions and summarising information, Alexa can also take actions on behalf of users.
“I think that the next generation of these assistants and generative AI applications will be better at not just answering questions and summarising, indexing, and aggregating data, but also taking actions. And you can imagine us being pretty good at that with Alexa,” he said during Amazon’s Q3 2024 earnings call.
“We continue to re-architect the brain of Alexa with a new set of foundation models that we’ll share with customers in the near future,” he added.
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