Amazon Alexa Might No Longer Be Frontrunner In Voice Assistants

In the smart voice assistant race, Amazon Alexa might not be at par with its competition. After Apple announced its new Apple Intelligence-powered Siri at WWDC 2024, a new report from Fortune suggests that Amazon’s Alexa is struggling with its own generative AI makeover.

“... none of the sources Fortune spoke with believe Alexa is close to accomplishing Amazon’s mission of being “the world’s best personal assistant,” let alone Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of creating a real-life version of the helpful Star Trek computer. Instead, Amazon’s Alexa runs the risk of becoming a digital relic with a cautionary tale— that of a potentially game-changing technology that got stuck playing the wrong game.”

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Amazon Alexa Struggling To Keep Up With Rivals

The report interviewed more than a dozen former employees, who talked about organizational dysfunction combined with technological hurdles that forced the company to blow its shot at dominating AI. Fortune reports the company responded to these claims saying the details given out by employees were old and did not reflect the current state of the Alexa LLM.

However, it looks like things aren’t very smooth for the new Alexa. The advanced version of the assistant Amazon showcased at its fall hardware event still hasn’t rolled out beyond the preview stage. And, as per the report, while the company might eventually launch a better LLM-based Alexa, it won’t be anywhere close to what people would expect it to be.

Several former employees interviewed by the outlet said they left in part because they thought the new Alexa would never be ready or already be outdated when it launches. Its biggest weakness is that it has to “navigate an existing tech stack and defend an existing feature set,” according to Fortune.

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Old Alexa Getting In New Alexa’s Way

Basically, the old Alexa is coming in new Alexa’s way. Fortune’s sources say Amazon has not yet figured out how to combine what Alexa can do now with the abilities it showcased for the new Alexa last year. One employee told the outlet that the message at Amazon after the demo event was that “we need to basically burn the bridge with the old Alexa AI model and pivot to only working on the new one.” 

As per the report, Amazon wants to get its Alexa LLM to consistently and effectively make API calls, which is how the current Alexa interacts with other things, including third-party smart home devices and music services. Amazon has also struggled to train the LLM to understand natural language, as while it has several devices in the wild, its customers have trained themselves in “Alexa language.”