Everything we’re expecting at Amazon’s Devices and Services event

Google Assistant is getting a generative AI boost, so why not Alexa? Voice assistants like Amazon Alexa leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning as a basis for becoming natural language-processing platforms. This allows them to respond to your questions, follow commands, and perform tasks in a conversational way, as if you were talking to another person.

But these systems are different to generative AI. If you ask Alexa a question about something, it’ll likely begin its answer with something like “According to an Alexa Answers contributor…”. This is because Alexa can access information online and parrot it to you, but cannot generate those answers.

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Adding generative AI capabilities to Alexa would allow the virtual assistant to create answers for you instead of looking them up online. It would also enable Alexa to answer multiple questions at once and provide customized ideas, such as a recipe with the items you have in your fridge. 

Though we can’t say for sure whether Amazon will announce a generative AI superpower for Alexa during its Devices and Services event, the company has hinted at the possibility.

“Generative AI is something we’ve been working on for a while, and it has huge potential — especially in the home,” Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, told Axios this summer. “The opportunity to bring generative AI to customers at that scale is incredibly exciting. But we also know we need to hold a high bar as we build new features and experiences.”