Amazon CEO says 100,000 users now have Alexa+

Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant powered by generative AI, Alexa+, has rolled out to over 100,000 customers, CEO Andy Jassy mentioned on the corporate’s earnings name Thursday.

Whereas that’s a far cry from the 600 million Alexa units on the market, the corporate is making some progress on the rollout of Alexa+, which was first unveiled in February. On the time, Amazon mentioned that Alexa+ would roll out in waves over the approaching months.

Amazon’s new digital assistant goals to let customers speak with it in a extra pure model, and ultimately have agentic skills that permit it to make use of third-party apps on a consumer’s behalf. Alexa+ ought to be capable to generate unique responses on the fly, very like the voice modes in OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, somewhat than the predetermined responses of the previous Alexa and Siri methods.

Nevertheless, as The Washington Publish reported at launch, the Alexa+ that’s rolling out at present lacks some of the key features the company demoed in February. The report notes that, at launch, Alexa+ didn’t have the power to make use of third occasion apps like GrubHub, generate a bedtime story for kids, or brainstorm a present concept. It’s unclear when these options will make it into Alexa+.

“We’ve much more performance that we plan so as to add in coming months,” Jassy mentioned on the decision.

Throughout his opening feedback, Jassy claimed that Alexa+ is likely one of the first action-oriented AI brokers for shoppers. However he famous that this expertise remains to be somewhat “primitive” and “inaccurate.” At the moment, most multi-step AI brokers have a low accuracy charge, between 30% and 60%, the Amazon CEO mentioned. Jassy set a purpose for the corporate’s web-browsing agent that powers Alexa+, Nova Act, to attain 90% accuracy on this area.

Amazon’s rollout of Alexa+ appears to be progressing quicker than Apple’s rollout of its new, LLM-powered Siri. When requested in regards to the new Siri delays on Apple’s Thursday earnings name, which occurred concurrently wiith Amazon’s, CEO Tim Prepare dinner mentioned the corporate wanted “more time to complete the work.”

Alongside the highway to supercharge legacy digital assistants with generative AI, each Apple and Amazon have reportedly run into snags and delays. Among the largest hiccups are round getting LLMs to make use of instruments and combine with different methods. Doing so permits Alexa and Siri to finish sensible duties akin to setting timers and studying texts, however implementing it has confirmed more durable than anticipated.