- Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s AGI team, promised that a major Alexa update is on the horizon.
- He spoke to the Financial Times about issues that forced publication to be delayed, mainly in the area of hallucinations.
- When the new Alexa arrives, expect it to be used for more than just basic tasks.
Amazon has spent years extolling Alexa’s capabilities as a voice assistant, although it seems like most people mainly use it to set timers and check the weather.
Still, that hasn’t stopped Amazon from giving Alexa a much more important place in your life. Amazon wants to take Alexa from its relatively simple life of timers and trivia to the big leagues of AI as a true personal concierge by leveraging the latest AI models, as Amazon’s artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead Rohit Prasad explained: to the FOOT.
Prasad and Amazon want to completely transform Alexa’s brain through a kind of ‘transplant’ to change the old question and answer engine for generative AI models. If all goes according to Amazon’s ambitious plan, Alexa 2.0 will be the constantly promised digital butler, rather than an audio timer and remote control. Prasad admitted that it won’t be easy, although he is confident that Amazon will be able to overcome the obstacles along the way.
If you don’t have hallucinations, Alexa needs to remove any AI-created hallucinations of your own. An assistant who fabricates answers that sound plausible but are completely wrong will not be of much use. When you ask about the best route to the airport, “plausible but incorrect” is not enough. Plus, Alexa needs to be trustworthy if people ask her to do more than just play their favorite music. The wrong song isn’t a big deal, but if you ask for it to reserve a dinner table, adjust the lights, and check your babysitter’s arrival time, you should be sure it won’t get it wrong.
At the same time, caution against mirages cannot stop responses. According to Prasad, while Alexa responds fairly quickly now, the new AI brain is a little slower, sometimes taking up to ten seconds to respond to a query. The company will have to update the new Alexa to make it attractive to users.
Alexa’s ambitious AI
One thing Amazon is especially interested in is keeping Alexa’s personality intact. Prasad said Amazon is hiring experts to fine-tune its voice, diction and overall personality to transition to more conversational AI. That said, generative AI is probabilistic, meaning it predicts responses based on patterns rather than absolute truths. That makes it ideal for casual conversations, but a bit risky for high-risk tasks like managing smart homes or broadcasting emergency alerts. The stakes are high, and any misstep could damage Alexa’s reputation.
No matter how good the new Alexa is at helping users, there’s one very obvious problem facing Amazon’s plans to turn Alexa into the ultimate digital concierge. Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others are working toward many of the same goals. In particular, Google has pretty much overwritten Google Assistant with Gemini across the board. Amazon had a big advantage over its rivals when it came to smart speakers and displays. However, that may not matter if no one thinks to use Alexa when they can turn to Gemini, ChatGPT, or other assistants with similar skills.
Still, Amazon has some assets that could make up for any existing gap. The company recently introduced the Nova AI models, which were built in-house and designed specifically for Alexa. Amazon has also deepened its partnership with Claude AI developer Anthropic, bolstered by $8 billion in investment funding.
Whether this is enough to outperform the competition remains to be seen, but time will certainly tell.
