Amazon disillusioned voice assistant Alexa: More than a decade of work, ‘captain’ Jeff Bezos leaves, all that remains is a loss of $ 10 billion

Tram Ho

It’s been more than a decade since Jeff Bezos excitedly outlined his vision for Alexa on a whiteboard at Amazon headquarters. This voice assistant is expected to be able to assist with all sorts of tasks, from shopping online, controlling devices, or even reading bedtime stories to your baby.

However, the Amazon founder’s grand vision for a new computing platform is gone. The fact that AI is expected to become the “next big thing” recently makes many people nostalgic about the previous “next big things” – virtual voice assistants that have been exhausted by Amazon, Google, Apple or Microsoft.

According to the FT, Alexa is gradually moving in the direction of helping the e-commerce giant make money. “If you can do anything to directly make money, do it now,” said one Amazon employee.

Amazon vỡ mộng trợ lý giọng nói Alexa: Hơn 1 thập kỷ công cốc, 'thuyền trưởng' Jeff Bezos ra đi, thứ còn lại chỉ là khoản lỗ 10 tỷ USD - Ảnh 1.

New CEO Andy Jassy’s shift in strategic focus led to significant layoffs on the Alexa development team late last year. The austerity move comes as part of a massive 18,000 job cuts during the tech downturn.

At Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella also tacitly admitted that voice assistants, including Cortana, have not developed as it was expected. “All virtual assistants are ‘as dumb as stone’. Whether it’s Cortana, Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri, it all doesn’t work.”

Meanwhile, Adam Cheyer, co-author of Siri, the voice assistant acquired by Apple in 2010, said ChatGPT’s ability to make today’s voice assistants look relatively “dumb”. “Things in the past were too difficult to handle. No one knows what they can or can’t do. Attempts to get Alexa to spit out ‘did you know’ information will only frustrate users further.”

Amazon vỡ mộng trợ lý giọng nói Alexa: Hơn 1 thập kỷ công cốc, 'thuyền trưởng' Jeff Bezos ra đi, thứ còn lại chỉ là khoản lỗ 10 tỷ USD - Ảnh 2.

Virtual voice assistants that were once highly recommended by Amazon, Google, Apple or Microsoft are now ‘give way’ to chatbots.

“Our patience is limited,” said Carolina Milanesi, president of market research group Creative Strategies.

Independent technology analyst Benedict Evans notes that for many users, Alexa is just seen as a “honored monument”. Still, Amazon is “more optimistic than ever” about this assistant technology.

“The reality is that Alexa continues to evolve. Engagement has grown by more than 30% globally by 2022. More than 50% of Alexa customers are now using it to shop,” said Amazon.

In many ways, Alexa can be considered a phenomenal success for Amazon. According to Insider Intelligence, it’s currently the leader in the US with about 66% of the voice-enabled market share.

According to Amazon, third-party manufacturers have made more than 140,000 Alexa-compatible products. Its operating system also controls more than 300 million smart devices, such as light bulbs or cameras. The IDC research team estimates that more than half of Alexa users interact with the device at least once a day, a success rate higher than both Apple Siri and Google Assistant. However, internal disagreements and cost-cutting policies have had a negative impact on Alexa.

The current state of affairs is in stark contrast to the enthusiasm of the past, when Bezos eagerly talked about Alexa and personally created the interface and the language.

“Our goal is not to make Alexa profitable. We just wanted to sell devices, and yes, we’ve sold a lot,” said the former Amazon chief marketing officer.

Amazon vỡ mộng trợ lý giọng nói Alexa: Hơn 1 thập kỷ công cốc, 'thuyền trưởng' Jeff Bezos ra đi, thứ còn lại chỉ là khoản lỗ 10 tỷ USD - Ảnh 3.

It’s been more than a decade since Jeff Bezos excitedly outlined his vision for Alexa on a whiteboard at Amazon headquarters.

The smartphone boom aside, Amazon once expected Alexa to open up a vast new ecosystem of potentially profitable apps. The company named them “Skills,” and opened Alexa to third-party developers.

As of November 2022, Amazon has more than 130,000 “Skills” in store. Google also made a similar move with its assistant in a language called “conversational actions”.

However, because “Skills” on Alexa are mostly provided for free, making money is almost impossible. Meanwhile, the “discovery” feature – the process by which users find new applications to try is also very difficult to develop.

“I think there are still a lot of people who don’t know what ‘Skills’ are,” said Brian Tarbox from Wabi Sabi Software, the company that developed Alexa Skills.

Four years after its launch, Alexa has also repeatedly caused controversy about sending voice recordings to the wrong people or Amazon employees eavesdropping on private conversations. The first cracks in the product business model began to appear.

By 2018, Alexa became a “black hole” swallowing Amazon’s money. The New York Times reported that it lost about $5 billion and is even nearing the $10 billion mark after developing Alexa and other devices.

At the end of 2019, Amazon froze hiring for the Alexa division. The morale of employees in the group also began to decline when the once very potential project was losing momentum.

Even so, many people still expect a resurgence of voice assistants thanks to general AI – which can make them much smarter than they are today. “AI is getting a lot of attention,” a current Amazon employee says of tools like ChatGPT. “We’ve had leaders ask us to think about what Alexa would be like with AI integration.”

Theo: FT, BI

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Source : Genk