Amazon CEO says 100,000 customers 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 gadgets 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 discuss with it in a extra pure type, and finally have agentic talents that enable it to make use of third-party apps on a person’s behalf. Alexa+ ought to be capable to generate authentic responses on the fly, very similar to the voice modes in OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, moderately than the predetermined responses of the previous Alexa and Siri methods.

Nevertheless, as The Washington Put up reported at launch, the Alexa+ that’s rolling out right this moment lacks a few of the key options the corporate demoed in February. The report notes that, at launch, Alexa+ didn’t have the flexibility to make use of third occasion apps like GrubHub, generate a bedtime story for youngsters, or brainstorm a present concept. It’s unclear when these options will make it into Alexa+.

“We have now 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 continues to be moderately “primitive” and “inaccurate.” Presently, most multi-step AI brokers have a low accuracy fee, between 30% and 60%, the Amazon CEO mentioned. Jassy set a aim for the corporate’s web-browsing agent that powers Alexa+, Nova Act, to realize 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 Cook dinner mentioned the corporate wanted “extra time to finish the work.”

Alongside the highway to supercharge legacy digital assistants with generative AI, each Apple and Amazon have reportedly run into snags and delays. A few of the greatest 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 similar to setting timers and studying texts, however implementing it has confirmed tougher than anticipated.