If you’re wondering what happened to Amazon’s new and improved version of its Alexa voice assistant, you’re not alone. reports that the new Alexa is still stuck in its development phase and Amazon has cut off access to its beta phase including its new “Let’s Talk” section. As a result, the planned launch in late 2024 has been pushed back to next year.
The problem is characterized by its large linguistic models (LLMs). The new Alexa is designed around users but may also fail to do some of the basic things the older version could easily do like setting a timer or using smart lights, according to a follow-up report from .
Amazon originally planned to unveil its new version of Alexa AI in October but now the timeline has been extended to next year. (As you may have noticed, October has come and gone.) The original timeline planned to start the next evolutionary step in the development of Alexa on October 17 but Amazon decided to go around and used the date to show its new line of Kindle ereaders. Then in August, news broke that the new Alexa would be powered and come with a monthly subscription fee.
As ChatGPT begins to increase in popularity in the summer of 2023, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wanted to see if Alexa could compete with AI improvements. Jassy reportedly started asking Alexa sports questions “as an ESPN reporter at a playoff press conference” and her answers were “almost perfect.” It even forms the score of Jassy’s latest game.
Despite this, Alexa passed the good enough stage and Jassy and his fellow managers felt that their developers could build a beta version in early 2024. Unfortunately, Amazon was unable to meet its deadline.
Even with the new deadline, the new Alexa still has a long way to go to fix its issues. Other workers told Bloomberg that the problem outside of Alexa’s inner workings is due to Amazon’s overblown management and lack of a “compelling vision for an AI-powered Alexa.” .
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