Amazon’s Alexa+ AI assistant has recently reached a milestone of 100,000 users in the United States. Despite this achievement, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has cautioned that the technology is still “primitive” during the company’s latest earnings call.
Alexa+ was launched in February with the promise of providing a more conversational experience through its AI chatbot. The tool is expected to evolve into an “agentic” AI, capable of interacting with third-party apps to perform tasks on behalf of users. Jassy explained that the goal is for Alexa+ to handle “wide-ranging complex, multi-step tasks” and noted that this type of action-oriented agent is a new development in the AI landscape.
Current Limitations and Future Plans
However, the current version of Alexa+ is missing some key features that were initially demonstrated. According to The Washington Post, some of these features are still pending. This is not an isolated incident, as other AI tools like Apple’s Siri have also faced delays and disruptions.
Jassy acknowledged the challenges facing Alexa+, stating that agentic AI tools, in general, are still in their infancy. Amazon’s Nova Act AI model aims to improve the accuracy of these tools from 30% to 60%, with a long-term goal of achieving over 90% accuracy. Clearly, Alexa+ has not yet reached this level of sophistication.
User Feedback and Availability
Amazon has been rolling out Alexa+ in waves, with plans to increase availability in the US in the coming months. International rollout plans have not been announced yet. So far, user feedback has been limited, but one user, Pretty2be, recently shared their experience on Reddit. They praised Alexa+ for its ability to interpret natural speech and its speech synthesis capabilities. However, they also noted that the tool tends to push users towards Amazon Music, even when they attempt to use Spotify.
While it’s unclear when Alexa+ will be available to more users, both user feedback and Jassy’s comments suggest that there is still work to be done. Hopefully, the missing features will be implemented before the next wave of users joins the platform.
