Alexa AI hasn't launched yet because it's too slow to respond to questions, insiders claim

Alexa AI isn't ready to launch

News By Hamish Hector published 20 November 2024

• Alexa AI latency problems are a "critical issue"
• Leaked memo claims Alexa AI has missed three 2024 launch dates
• Amazon wants to give Alexa supercharged skills

Generative AI updates from Google and Apple have made their artificial assistants more useful in a number of ways – giving them new features, and generally making them easier to instruct – but one big name in the smart assistant world has been noticeably absent from the upgrade list: Alexa. Amazon is reportedly working on rolling out an Alexa AI, but it’s just too slow to respond to queries to be launched yet.

Fortune has shared leaked internal documents highlighting a few critical flaws with Alexa, with the big one apparently being latency – the AI takes way too long to respond when given an instruction or asked a question.

This issue has reportedly led to low satisfaction scores from testers. Before launch Amazon reportedly wanted to achieve an average satisfaction score of 5.5 out of 7, but testers rated the AI service at just 4.57. This is why it appears Amazon has missed its three target launch dates in 2024 – the most recent being November 14.

Another concern, not one not labeled a “critical issue” like latency but still a concern, is that the Alexa AI may be incompatible with some older models which could force a lot of users to upgrade their tech to access the new AI. Admittedly, this isn’t a major surprise given that for many phones only the latest models are getting some AI improvements, but Amazon might fear it’ll upset customers who have been wanting this kind of update for years only to miss out when their ‘smart’ assistant finally gets a brain.

One thing that is noticeably absent from the leaked memo is any mention of Claude AI. Athropic’s Claude is seen as one of the best ChatGPT alternatives but it lacks a voice mode; a partnership with Amazon when it was teased by leakers therefore made a lot of sense as it would give Amazon a leg up in the AI race and Anthropic assistance in teaching Claude to communicate with a voice.

It could mean the Claude leak was false, or perhaps the partnership was decided on after this memo was published as a way to resolve the issue. Either way it highlights that as with all leaks these details should be taken with a pinch of salt; as such issues such as Alexa AI’s latency could be in a much better state now than when the memo was written.

Teaching an old Alexa new Skills

Beyond Alexa AI delays, the leak also teases upgrades to Alexa services involving Amazon’s partners like GrubHub, Ticketmaster and Uber (via Business Insider, behind a paywall). While these services already had Alexa skills Amazon wants to alter their relationship with the smart assistant.

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