On Wednesday, Amazon previewed a new version of its popular voice assistant powered by what it called “smarter and more-conversational” artificial intelligence. It’s like Alexa crossed with ChatGPT.
Dave Limp, senior vice president of devices and services at Amazon, speaks during an Amazon event last week when the company previewed a push into generative artificial intelligence with new features for its Alexa voice assistant.and interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board. But I review all tech with the same critical eye.
A version of that “let’s chat” function will be available to owners of Echo smart speakers some time this year, the company said. In response to a question I proposed about why there is smoke today in San Francisco, Alexa said there was no “smoke” – and then followed it with a non sequitur about how the air quality index in the city is high today.
“What we’ll launch this year behind ‘let’s chat’ will be fun to play with, but it’s not the endgame,” Limp said, because it only has access to a fraction of all the capabilities built into today’s Alexa. A more complete remake of Alexa would happen “through the end of next year,” Limp said. “The reason I would trust it is we are not a start-up with a couple hundred people,” Limp said. Over the last nine years, he said, Amazon has learned a lot about how people interact with Alexa and how to keep the content appropriate. That’s one reason Amazon moved slowly into this sort of product, Limp said. “We didn’t want to hallucinate in your home that much.”