- Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s AGI team, has promised that a major Alexa upgrade is on the horizon.
- He spoke to FT about issues leading to a delay in release, primarily in the area of hallucinations.
- When the new Alexa arrives, we hope it will be used for more than just basic tasks.
Amazon has spent years touting Alexa’s capabilities as a voice assistant, even though it seems most people use it primarily to set timers and check the weather.
Even so, that hasn’t stopped Amazon from carving out a much bigger place for Alexa in your life. Amazon wants Alexa to move from its relatively simple life of timers and trivia to the AI big leagues as a true personal concierge by taking advantage of the latest AI models, as Rohit Prasad explained, Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) leader. FT.
Prasad and Amazon want to completely transform Alexa’s brain through a sort of “graft” to replace the old question-and-answer engine with generative AI models. If all goes according to Amazon’s ambitious plan, Alexa 2.0 will be the constantly promised digital butler, rather than an audio stopwatch and remote control. Prasad admitted that it wouldn’t be easy, although he is confident that Amazon can overcome the obstacles that stand in its way.
If he doesn’t have hallucinations, Alexa must eliminate all hallucinations created by the AI. An assistant who fabricates answers that sound plausible but are completely wrong won’t be very useful. When you ask what the best route to the airport is, the answer “plausible but wrong” won’t cut it. Plus, Alexa needs to be reliable if people ask it to do more than just listen to their favorite music. The wrong song is no big deal, but if you ask him to reserve a table for dinner, adjust your lights, and check on your babysitter’s arrival time, you need to be sure he doesn’t there will be nothing wrong.
At the same time, caution in the face of mirages cannot slow down responses. According to Prasad, while Alexa now responds fairly quickly, the new AI brain is a bit slower, sometimes taking up to ten seconds to respond to a query. The company will have to update the new Alexa to make it attractive to users.
Ambitious Alexa AI
One thing Amazon is particularly keen on is keeping Alexa’s personality intact. Prasad said Amazon is hiring experts to refine its voice, diction and overall personality to transition to more conversational AI. That said, generative AI is probabilistic, meaning it predicts answers based on patterns rather than absolute truths. This makes it great for casual conversations, but a bit risky for high-stakes tasks like managing smart homes or transmitting emergency alerts. The stakes are high and any misstep could damage Alexa’s reputation.
Regardless of how well the new Alexa helps users, there is a very obvious problem with Amazon’s plan to make Alexa the ultimate digital concierge. Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta and others are working toward many of the same goals. In particular, Google has pretty much replaced Google Assistant with Gemini across the board. Amazon had a major lead over its competitors when it came to smart speakers and displays. However, it doesn’t matter if no one thinks about using Alexa when they can turn to Gemini, ChatGPT, or other assistants with similar capabilities.
Still, Amazon has some strengths that could fill any existing gaps. The company recently launched Nova AI models, built in-house and designed specifically for Alexa. Amazon also deepened its partnership with Anthropic, Claude’s AI developer, backed by $8 billion in investment funds.
Whether this will be enough to overtake the competition remains to be seen, but time will certainly tell.
