Amazon is preparing to relaunch its Alexa voice assistant with enhanced generative AI capabilities. Rohit Prasad, head of Amazon's artificial general intelligence (AGI) team, shared the company’s plan with the Financial Times.

Prasad said Amazon aims to transform Alexa into a more advanced AI agent capable of performing a wider range of tasks. 

Amazon’s plan for the Alexa’s upgrade 

According to Prasad, Amazon plans to replace Alexa’s existing question-answering system with generative AI models. This upgrade will enable Alexa to move beyond simple tasks like playing music or setting alarms and function as a personalized “agentic” assistant. Potential capabilities include making restaurant suggestions and adjusting home lighting based on a user’s sleep patterns. The new system will aim to also translate voice queries and generate responses.

Technical challenges might slow Alexa’s rollout

Prasad said Amazon still faces technical challenges before the relaunch. He noted issues such as response reliability, speed, and the challenge of minimizing AI "hallucinations," where the system generates incorrect or misleading information. “Hallucinations have to be close to zero,” Prasad said. 

The company said it was “working hard to enable even more proactive and capable assistance.” According to Prasad, “It’s still an open problem in the industry, but we are working extremely hard on it.” 

Prasad also noted the challenge of integrating generative AI into Alexa’s existing ecosystem of over 500 million devices. He said that developing a generative AI-powered assistant at this scale requires more than simply overlaying a large language model onto the existing system. 

“Sometimes we underestimate how many services are integrated into Alexa, and it’s a massive number. These applications get billions of requests a week, so when you’re trying to make reliable actions happen at speed . . . you have to be able to do it in a very cost-effective way,” Prasad explained.

To support the transition, Amazon reportedly plans to hire experts to refine Alexa’s personality, voice, and diction to maintain a familiar tone for users.

Competitive challenges

Amazon has been working on Alexa’s generative AI transformation for the past two years. This follows the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022. The company faces stiff competition from rivals such as Microsoft and Google, which have integrated AI into their platforms. 

According to FT, critics question whether Amazon can keep up and overcome its internal challenges in time to stay competitive. 

Amazon’s goal is to develop a set of AI models that can serve a range of applications beyond Alexa. The company says it is committed to delivering practical AI solutions that provide value to customers.

Prasad said, “We are doing this to deliver customer value and impact, which in this era of generative AI is becoming more important than ever.”

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