Alexa at 10: Amazon’s Assistant is a winner and a bust

Alexa didn’t attend a large, spectacular launch event or make some grand declarations about being the future of anything. Instead, like a phone charger with a made-up name or a knockoff of your favorite blush, it just showed up on Amazon one day.

Ten years ago, on November 6, 2014, Amazon ushered in the era of Echo and sharp speakers. The device quickly followed with countless more, from Amazon and others. It became a symbol of the voice-first way of using technology, the “ambient computing” revolution that Amazon and others believed would change the way we do everything. Now there are Alexa devices in millions of homes that simply listen and sing to you all day long.

ON this episode Vergecastwe struggle with what it all really adds up to. EdgeJennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to talk about what led to this surprise launch in 2014, the explosive growth of the Alexa ecosystem, and the challenges Amazon and everyone else has faced in trying to figure out what these sharp speakers can really do. In some ways, Alexa is an undeniable hit and a completely mainstream part of our technological lives. But despite all this success, Alexa never lived up to Amazon’s lofty goals. This isn’t the ultra-powerful, ultra-versatile Star Trek computer; it’s not even a better way to shop. After all this time, it’s for the music and the timers. Alexa has always liked music and timers.

However, Alexa is facing a large change. We talk a lot about what the so-called “Amazing Alexa” update could mean for the virtual assistant as Amazon changes its core technology to rely on gigantic language models and generative artificial intelligence. Now it’s pretty clear that Amazon’s large idea was right on some level. Is the technology finally ready to make this a reality? Will Amazon ever ship this thing so we can find out? Echo was a surprise ten years ago – maybe another one awaits us.

If you want to learn more about everything we cover in this episode, here are some links to get you started: