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 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 discuss with it in a extra pure fashion, and finally have agentic talents that permit it to make use of third-party apps on a consumer’s behalf. Alexa+ ought to have the ability to generate authentic responses on the fly, very like the voice modes in OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, slightly than the predetermined responses of the previous Alexa and Siri programs.

Nonetheless, as The Washington Put up reported at launch, the Alexa+ that’s rolling out as we speak 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 celebration apps like GrubHub, generate a bedtime story for kids, or brainstorm a present thought. 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 customers. However he famous that this expertise continues to be slightly “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 objective 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 sooner than Apple’s rollout of its new, LLM-powered Siri. When requested concerning the new Siri delays on Apple’s Thursday earnings name, which occurred concurrently wiith Amazon’s, CEO Tim Cook dinner mentioned the corporate wanted “more time to complete the work.”

Alongside the street 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 programs. Doing so permits Alexa and Siri to finish sensible duties resembling setting timers and studying texts, however implementing it has confirmed more durable than anticipated.