By: Nick Gambino
Amazon has just announced a special event being held on February 26th. The tech giant is expected to unveil an AI-powered version of Alexa.
Every tech company finds themselves in the awkward position of embracing AI or facing the possibility of becoming outdated. Not only do they need to embrace the new version of the machine learning tech, the big companies are expected to create their own version.
Amazon is no exception which is why they’ve been hard at work on retooling their popular digital assistant, Alexa, to be able to carry out generative AI functions.
According to Reuters, there are over 500 million devices using Alexa, so this is a big market to tap into. While Alexa was certainly innovative when it first launched just over 10 years ago, as was Siri, there is something about it that feels…antiquated.
While these digital assistants can certainly carry out simple tasks, there’s a distinct lack of back-and-forth conversation that feels off. It feels like you’re talking to a robot. AI bots at their best feel almost human.
I suppose that’s what Amazon intends with their newest version of Alexa. They want it to feel like you’re talking to a human assistant who can bandy about with you. This means it won’t only act in response to one question or command at a time. It should be clever enough to juggle multiple requests at once.
What’s more, there’s a possibility it will be able to act on its own, scheduling or carrying out tasks that you haven’t asked it to do. That’s a scary notion, but we’ll just have to see how it plays out in the real world.
Now, if you don’t want to get involved in all that AI mess, you will still have the option to use Classic Alexa as you have been. This is just another version to choose from if you so desire.
According to rumors, the generative AI Alexa service will be free, but they might charge a few bucks down the line as they roll it out wide.
