The reason we don't have Alexa with AI yet? It's still too dumb

While Google and Microsoft have made huge strides in generative AI and conversational chatbots, there is a big name in the world of smart assistants from which we haven’t heard anything. Yes, we are talking about Amazon and its globally used service called Alexa.

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And it seems that now we know why. According to reports, Amazon is working on the deployment of an Alexa AI, but it is too slow to respond to queries to be launched yet.

The magazine Fortune has shared leaked internal documents highlighting some critical flaws of Alexa, the main one being latency: the AI takes too long to respond when given an instruction or asked a question.

Very high latency and incompatibility with older Alexa models

Apparently, this issue has led to low satisfaction among users. It seems that before the launch, Amazon wanted to achieve an average satisfaction score of 5.5 out of 7, but the test participants rated the AI service with only 4.57 points. For this reason, it appears that Amazon has missed its three planned launch dates for 2024, the most recent being November 14.

Another cause for concern, which is not considered a critical issue like latency, but still remains, is that Alexa’s AI may be incompatible with some older models, which could force many users to upgrade their technology to access the new AI.

Claude ACCESS

It is true that this is not a big surprise, given that in many phones only the latest models are receiving some AI improvements, but Amazon might fear that this will upset customers who have been waiting for this type of update for years.

In any case, as with all leaks, these details should be taken with caution, as issues such as Alexa’s AI latency could be much better now than when the note was written.

An independent and intelligent Alexa

Amazon wants its AI-enhanced Alexa to perform more tasks on its own, instead of delegating to a third-party app on the phone, as it does with some tasks. This way, you could ask the smart speaker to take you to the movies or reorder last week’s takeout, and it could, using data from your linked accounts, perform those tasks for you without you having to do anything.

It is an intriguing idea, but the success of this strategy will depend on whether users trust that artificial intelligence gets it completely right and that it doesn’t accidentally place a food delivery order for something it hears on the television. Everything points to a launch in 2025, assuming it doesn’t encounter more bumps along the way.