In the competitive race among voice assistants, the leader might soon fall behind. Following Apple’s unveiling of a new Siri powered by “Apple Intelligence” at WWDC 2024, a Fortune report suggests that Amazon’s Alexa, considered the most capable current voice assistant, is facing difficulties with its generative AI transformation.
According to sources interviewed by Fortune, Alexa is far from meeting Amazon‘s goal of becoming “the world’s best personal assistant” or Jeff Bezos’ vision of a real-life Star Trek computer.
Instead, Alexa risks becoming a cautionary tale of a revolutionary technology that failed to evolve properly.
The detailed report, based on interviews with over a dozen former employees and available in full on Yahoo Finance, points to organizational dysfunction and technical hurdles as reasons for Amazon’s missed opportunity to dominate AI.
However, the rollout of the new, more conversational Alexa, previewed at last year’s fall hardware event, remains limited. Fortune reports that while Amazon might eventually release an improved LLM-based Alexa, it won’t reach its full potential.
Many ex-employees left because they doubted the new Alexa would ever be ready or feared it would be surpassed by competitors before its launch. Alexa’s main disadvantage, compared to rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is its need to “navigate an existing tech stack and defend an existing feature set.”
Essentially, the old Alexa is hindering the new Alexa. Sources told Fortune that Amazon struggles to merge the current Alexa’s capabilities with those of the new model.
One former employee mentioned that the company’s post-demo message was to “burn the bridge with the old Alexa AI model and pivot to only working on the new one.”
Additionally, Amazon has faced challenges with getting Alexa’s LLM to consistently and effectively make API calls, which are crucial for interacting with third-party smart home devices and music services.
Training the LLM to understand natural language has also been problematic, as users have adapted to speaking in “Alexa language” rather than engaging in natural conversation.
Another issue reported is Amazon’s decentralized structure, with thousands of employees working on Alexa spread across numerous teams, leading to friction and frustration.
Mihail Eric, a former research scientist who left in 2021, criticized the company’s organizational setup on X (formerly Twitter), suggesting that it hindered progress on his Alexa projects, which he believes could have led to an Amazon version of ChatGPT.
Amazon maintains its commitment to improving Alexa.
Kristy Schmidt told The Verge that the company’s vision remains to create the world’s best personal assistant.
She highlighted the potential of generative AI to enhance Alexa, noting ongoing efforts to scale its implementation across over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices worldwide.
Despite past missteps, Amazon is working hard to catch up. Dave Limp, the former head of devices and services, left after last fall’s event, and his successor, Panos Panay from Microsoft, has been in place for just over six months.
With fall 2024 approaching, it remains to be seen if Amazon can fulfill its promises.
