- Amazon’s rollout of Alexa+ lacks much public proof
- Technical problems may be delaying a wider release
- Amazon claims that Alexa+ is used by hundreds of thousands of homes
Amazon revealed Alexa+ with great fanfare more than six weeks ago, but there has not been much of a conversation among AI and voice assistant users about it ever since. My informal control of more than a dozen tongue Alexa users around the US found none with access to it, and a report from Pakinomist Suggests it is far from the explosive event Amazon hyped it up to be on the debut presentation.
Alexa+ is assumed to be Amazon’s infusion of AI in the eleven -year -old voice assistant. Using generative AI as an glowed tool makes Alexa smarter, more useful, better for conversation and just more intuitive as an assistant. Alexa+ is assumed to give the voice assistant many new and improved ability to implement your requests, such as processing multiple prompts at once and adapting to customizing its services. For example, it should remember your diet preferences while helping you order food.
Invitations to early access were intended to start going out at the end of March. Anecdotally, nobody has arrived, and a look at social media does not reveal any hummer either. Here at Techradar, Alexa has for weeks told editor at Large Lance Ulanoff that he is “on the early access list”, but there is still no sign of Alexa+.
Even a Reddit post covered by Techradar has since been removed from the website. Amazon asks to deviate about this conclusion. The company expresses confidence in the current and future release of Alexa+.
“Early access to Alexa+ is smoking up. It’s already open to hundreds of thousands of customers and we expect it to roll out millions in the coming month,” a spokesman for Amazon told Techradar. “This is no different than other invitation programs we’ve been running – we scale while we’re learning.”
Alexa+ plans
Since Amazon insists that there is no slow time by Alexa+, the reasons behind a seeming delay are also not official. That said, the Pakinomist report quoted possible technical problems around the speed and accuracy of the renewed Alexa, as well as higher than the preferred cost of running the new models. There’s a bit déjà vu here, since Amazon made a lot of noise around an AI-enhanced Alexa in the fall of 2023, with an early preview promised in the coming weeks that never happened.
It is far from the 2014 redevelopment of the original Amazon Echo, which started sending only a few weeks after it appeared on a stage. Amazon may feel that efforts are too high to prioritize timing rather than performance this time. If Alexa+ fumbles at the launch, it could undermine Amazon’s whole smart home strategy. Worse is that it can strengthen the idea that Alexa is more of a talking hour than a true digital assistant.
Amazon also did it recently, so Alexa interactions are treated only in the cloud and removes the possibility of local treatment. This change may increase Alexa +’s brain power, but it also raises privacy flags that may need to be treated before a broad release.
So Alexa+ technically exists and Amazon swears it is used. But you will have to wait for a review of Alexa+ from someone’s home. Until then, Alexa+ is more ghost than AI ghost in the machine.
