Amazon Rolls Out Generative AI Alexa, Launches New Speakers
Amazon.com Inc. made a pitch to keep Alexa relevant in the age of generative artificial intelligence, promising a set of features that will make the software more conversational.
During an event Wednesday at the company's campus in Arlington, Virginia, outgoing devices chief Dave Limp demonstrated a coming feature, called Let's Chat, that's designed to handle a back-and-forth conversation.
Limp showed off an apparently live interaction with a screen-based Alexa device in which he asked it a series of facts about his (and the software's) favorite football teams, that ended with a request for Alexa to compose a message to a friend. Most of the answers relied on a core piece of Alexa's existing programming — finding and surfacing facts — though the running conversation and contextual comprehension appeared to exceed the system's current capabilities.
“You can now have near human-like interactions with Alexa,” Limp said.
Amazon is keen to show that Alexa can compete with chatbots from OpenAI and Google that have shown a remarkable ability to hold human-like conversations with users. Amazon's voice software, released almost a decade ago, has proved expert at summoning trivia or playing music. But those who try to use Alexa for more complicated tasks often come away frustrated.
The system demonstrated by Limp learns about its users, so if they ask Alexa how their favorite football team is doing, the assistant already knows which team the person is referring to. The demonstration also showed how conversations could continue based on preceding interactions, bypassing the typical need to again provide context and summon the device with the Alexa wake word.
Like ChatGPT, the system can also send text from the user to others. For
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