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People are asking Alexa for ideas for date nights, or when is a good time to go to Puerto Rico. The responses are very ChatGPT, in that it’s natural language with some specific recommendations, but pretty concise since you clearly don’t want to listen for ages.
Five foundational capabilities were developed for Amazon’s new AI model.
Conversational – it needs to be fast to respond when it’s voice-based rather than text, and it knows whether you’re still around so it’s not talking to nothing.
Real-world applications – it needs to understand the devices you have, how they work, and how they affect your actual home.
Personalization – Recommendations, personal reminders, grocery needs, and some personality. “Alexa will have opinions” and “dad jokes”.
Trust – “We believe there is no trade-off between trust and performance”. Amazon says it’ll give you information and control to protect your privacy even with generative AI in the background.
Now we’ll get a look at it in action.
Here’s our look at a generative-based Alexa.
Echo Show 8 will be $149, available to order today, shipping “next month”.
All-new Echo Show 8 is redesigned with edge-to-edge glass. A new central camera position, and improved noise-cancelling tech for what it picks up in the home when you’re talking to it.
There’s a big speaker on the back, with two drivers and a hefty radiator, with spatial audio processing and auto-tuning for your room.
The screen now detects how close you are to it, changing what’s shown based on your distance. Simple and easy-to-see information from across the room, with more detailed info appearing when you’re closer and can make out more.
New local language processing is 40% faster, apparently.
With generative AI, a “superhuman assistant” is “within reach”, says Limp. A billion devices have connected to Alexa in the last decade, with tens of millions of uses per hour.
AI has already been mentioned, drink! Bet we’ll hear a lot about a smart Alexa today.
Oh, I just saw a cat interacting with Amazon Astro! It’s here in spirit, at least.
Amazon’s Dave Limp is now on-stage, starting us off.
The event is starting! With kids asking an Echo Dot for Baby Shark, and dogs pressing a Ring doorbell. Classic tech event stuff.
What odds do you put on Amazon Astro making a return here, folks? Maybe finally going on sale? Or what if there’s a smarter and more advanced Astro 2? Does that mean the adorable original is left on the smart home scrapheap, perhaps to star in his own Wall•E-like adventure of redemption? We can only assume.
Speaking of our man, here he is. Lance was at Apple HQ last week, spent all the intervening time writing our iPhone 15 review and iPhone 15 Pro Max review, and has now zipped off to get his hands on Amazon’s latest stuff. The man is indefatigable when it comes to tech.
This is where the magic will happen, starting in 10 minutes. This event isn’t available to stream publicly, so you’ll need to follow along here for all the hot gossip from our man on the ground.
