Amazon’s fall hardware event had a little of everything: updated Echo speakers, several Blink security devices, and even a Kindle Scribe with a color screen. Most of the gadgets won’t ship for at least a couple of weeks, if not longer; however, most are also available for preorder at Amazon if you want to be…
I’ve waited two years to try out the new Alexa, which was first announced way back in 2023, and this week I finally got access to Alexa Plus. I’ve now spent 24 hours with Amazon’s generative AI-powered voice assistant, and it’s not just an improvement on the original; it’s an entirely new assistant. Alexa Plus…
Yesterday, Reuters ran a story with the headline “Weeks after Amazon’s Alexa+ AI launch, a mystery: where are the users?,” in which it detailed its difficulty locating first-hand accounts of the AI-upgraded assistants’ use online. The Verge asked Amazon about the story, and the company has responded to say that the idea that Alexa Plus…
According to images seen by The Verge, Amazon is testing changing the name of its Echo smart speakers and smart displays to Alexa. We saw two separate instances of Amazon.com landing pages displaying the name of the Echo Show 5 smart display as the Alexa Show 5, along with new branding for an Alexa Show…
Amazon started the Alexa Fund in 2015 to back early-stage voice startups. With the advent of large language models and Amazon launching Gen AI-powered Alexa+ along with a family of multimodal AI models, the fund now wants to broaden its scope and invest more in AI startups. In a blog post Amazon shared with TechCrunch…
Following ongoing reports that Amazon’s generative AI makeover of Alexa is not going well, it appears Amazon may take a more practical approach to making its smart assistant more useful. According to Business Insider, Amazon is partnering with several companies to make Alexa better at doing things you might want a digital assistant to do: including…
In the week’s least surprising news, Amazon’s reinvention of its Alexa voice assistant has reportedly fallen even further behind. According to Bloomberg, the launch of a new Alexa — billed as a smarter, more capable AI-powered voice assistant — has been pushed back. Again. “A person familiar with the matter said Alexa AI teams were…
Amazon loses money on Echo smart speakers. It’s been an open secret for the duration of Alexa’s existence. It’s the product of the kind of loss leader strategy only a company of Amazon’s size can get away with for a decade. Selling hardware at a loss can be an effective strategy, of course. Think about…