Amazon might be in a pickle with the promised AI upgrades to Alexa.
Bloomberg reported that the company’s signature voice assistant, which was supposed to get a big AI overhaul before the end of this year, will instead get that upgrade in 2025. The idea is to make Alexa smarter and more powerful by making it more conversational and capable of new things. Unfortunately, by all accounts, that isn’t happening.
The Bloomberg report goes on to detail the problems that the AI-enhanced Alexa is having in testing. For example, beta users reported that the AI can give long, rambling answers that aren’t entirely relevant to the original query. Other alleged problems include hallucinations and, stunningly, a failure to work with connected smart devices like light switches consistently.
Amazon hasn’t officially confirmed any delay, but beta access has apparently been turned off, so you can’t even try the more conversational Alexa in a test environment anymore. Perhaps you’ll be able to use it in 2025.