Amazon Alexa is a "colossal failure" reports Ars Technica

... and losing billions of dollars per year

[ronin]

Mrs ronin and I have neither a Smart Speaker nor any interest in getting one in the next decade or two.

But we know plenty of friends who do have a Smart Speaker, so this genuinely surprised me:

[arstechnica.com...]

It's not like Alexa plays ad breaks after you use it, so the hope was that people would buy things on Amazon via their voice.

Right. That's what I would have guessed Amazon's intentions were.

Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews.

Yes, but... I would have anticipated that Amazon Alexa was looking to tie in with supermarket home deliveries.

You know, like:

Alexa, a new loaf of bread before tomorrow, please.

or

Alexa, 4 pints of milk, by Thursday, please.

or

Alexa, 2 litres of sparkling water, a bunch of bananas, six braeburn apples, a box of bran flakes, half a dozen free range eggs, a litre of orange juice, a litre of apple juice, a kilo of porridge oats, a tube of toothpaste, a jar of pesto, 500 grams of conchiglie pasta, a cucumber and a packet of bourbon biscuits before the weekend, please.

I also would have thought the single best time (in history) to push this "new way of shopping" (VoiceShopping?) would have been the Covid-19 lockdowns.

I'm... really surprised.

[engine]

Well, I'm the regular tester, and have the entry level device to understand how it works and how I can use it.

I find the device is a very convenient way of providing a kitchen cooking timer.

I very much doubt I would ever ask it to "order cabbage" but I can see how it will help some people less able.

It's quite intrusive, and records a lot of general waffle, which is not addressed to the device. I regularly delete these recordings, and leave the microphone off.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I don't know, this use of Alexa is a must see - [youtube.com...]

The fishes aside, I now leave my mobile phone at home when I visit friends and family after one was informed of a purchase I made, as a recommendation they buy it too.

Apparently Alexa, and other devices, are aware of other devices near it. If you visit a friend on a special occasion Amazon can deduce you are friends via device proximity, length of time spent in proximity etc. They never forget it either, it's a bit much. It's always listening, too. Gives me the creeps.

Shame about the layoffs. A group of 10,000 were let go without advance notice and many were forced to stand in line to turn in their safety vest and key cards before leaving. There's lots of video of it online as you'd expect with thousands standing in line and upset, but it's not really news when Bezos does it I guess.

- Cheap safety vest, $3 in bulk.
- Keycard to swipe and prove where you are, $2 in bulk
- Not making people stand in line for 2 hours to turn them in, priceless

[londrum]

I think amazon is actually making it far too easy to buy stuff, which is off-putting to a lot of people.
If a speaker can order groceries then i want to look at the basket first, to check the quantities and packet sizes etc, check my address, enter my card number, enter a password
Thats the reason i removed my card details from the Amazon website because with ‘one-click’ ordering its too easy to press the button and suddenly find you've purchased it

[engine]

I wonder if the other "assistants" from Google and Apple are under the same pressure. It seems so, but Apple is selling its hardware to make money: Apple fans will always pay more.

Since "voice" was developed as a way to communicate in recent years it's been a bit of a battle to monetise it. I looked at ways to gain an advantage with voice search [webmasterworld.com] a while back, but monetisation was a challenge, and, clearly, remains so.