At the end of the month, Amazon plans to present the long -awaited large update of the ALEXA voice assistant, which is based on generative artificial intelligence, reports Reuters with reference to three sources. This will be the largest update of ALEXA since the assistant entered the market and provoked the active development of such projects.
Image source: aboutamazon.com
On the eve of Amazon, the media sent an invitation to an event that will take place on February 26 in New York-the head of the department of devices and Panos Panay (Panos Panay) department will take part in it. The company representative confirmed that the event will be devoted to Alexa, but did not report details. The virtual assistant, based on generative AI, represents for Amazon the possibility of growing on the market for half a billion devices with ALEXA support, and a huge risk. The company hopes that capable of fully communicating with users of the voice assistant will serve as an incentive for hundreds of millions of clients to go to the category of payers and will help make a profitable business direction profitable.
With generative AI ALEXA will be able to answer several questions sequentially and even act as an “agent” on behalf of users, performing some actions instead of them. Now the voice assistant processes only one request at a time. The internal meeting of the Amazon leadership is scheduled for February 14. On it, top managers will make the final decision on whether Alexa is ready with generative AI to enter the market.
The new format of the voice assistant threatens Amazon with problems inherent in modern chat boots from Openai, Google and other developers-we are talking about “hallucinations”, that is, cases when a chatbot gives obviously incorrect answers. Now Alexa is present in cars, TVs, home climatic systems and mobile phones – in a new form, a virtual assistant can become an important daily planning tool and a purchase tool.
At the initial stage, Amazon plans to deploy an updated version of ALEXA for a limited number of users and not to charge it, but in the future the subscription can be from $ 5 to $ 10 per month. The existing free version of Classic Alexa will continue to work in the same mode. Amazon released her voice assistant three years later Apple Siri, but Alexa became more popular. Due to the lack of significant changes in recent years in practice, it has been used to solve basic problems like installing a timer in the kitchen or a weather forecast request.
Almost ten years ago, the then head of the Amazon Devices Department, Dave Limp, promised that someday Alexa “could give an answer to everything that they would ask him.” Users have high expectations from Alexa update, and the company still has concerns about the quality and speed of the voice assistant’s answers. The version with generative AI is internal names Banyan and Remarkable Alexa, but there is no clarity whether Amazon uses one of them when the product is withdrawn to the market.
In January, the head of the development developers of the strong AI (AGI) in Amazon Rochit Prasad admitted that the company is experiencing some difficulties in developing an updated ALEXA, including the elimination of hallucinations – in fact, this is a completely new project. If at least 10 % of 100 million active users of the voice assistant will pay $ 5 per month for it, the company will annually help out $ 600 million.
A virtual assistant with generative AI is developed taking into account the need to remember the preferences of users in order to give them recommendations on music or visiting restaurants; It is assumed that for one session it will be possible to give ALEXA several teams at once, for example, cancel the order of a hamburger before he was sent to delivery. At least part of the functions will be responsible for ANTHropic startup, in which Amazon has invested $ 8 billion. The early version of ALEXA with generative AI inside Amazon demonstrated in September 2023, but the company has doubts about the quality of the system, and the deadline for the project output by The market has been transferred repeatedly.