Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday, September 20, unveiled a slate of new and refreshed devices and updated its Alexa voice assistant with generative artificial intelligence to attract users to the unprofitable product as competition grows from chatbots like Google’s Bard.
Amazon introduced Alexa in 2014, but has not found a consistent means to make it profitable, instead driving shoppers toward the company’s website for more purchases. Typically accessed through speakers or enabled televisions, the service provides spoken answers to user queries, like the local weather, and can serve as a hub to control home appliances.
“You can now have a near-human-like conversations with Alexa,” Dave Limp, Amazon’s hardware chief, said at the event. Limp, who is leaving the company before year’s end, showed how one could ask a series of questions without repeatedly using the “Alexa” wake word, a new feature for at least some Alexa devices, like the refreshed Echo Show 8.