Artificial intelligence
Chatting with Alexa: Amazon is jumping on the chatbot wave
Amazon wants to make Alexa the “central nervous system in a home.” photo
© Soeren Stache/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
When the chatbot ChatGPT came out in 2022, pioneers like Alexa or Siri suddenly no longer looked so innovative. But Amazon has now mastered AI technology and is relying on years of experience in the smart home.
More natural conversations with the voice assistant are a central component of this. Thanks to the new technology, it will be possible, for example, to set up recurring action routines with one sentence, said Amazon’s device manager Dave Limp to the German Press Agency. It’s enough to say: “Alexa, play wake-up music in the children’s room every morning at 9 a.m. and pull up the blinds.” Previously, you had to program such routines in the app.
And if you’ve recently installed a smart light bulb and can’t remember its name, you can simply ask Alexa to turn on the new light bulb and the software will understand what it is.
Limp was convinced that the more natural conversation with Alexa as well as technical standards that allow devices from different providers to work better together would avoid a lot of frustration when using the smart home. But it will take some time: Amazon’s new language models will only fully develop their capabilities after a few months, because we first have to learn more from practice.
New technology initially limited to the USA
At the event on Wednesday, Limp also demonstrated how the new Alexa automatically formulates a message to friends with the information discussed after a conversation, which only needs to be sent. The new language models also shorten the reaction time in interactions with Alexa, which makes for more casual conversation, he emphasized.
Alexa, which has been improved with the new language models, will be available – initially in the USA – on all Echo speaker models released in the past ten years.
Tech giants respond to ChatGPT
The release of the chatbot ChatGPT from the start-up OpenAI at the end of last year made voice assistance pioneers such as Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant appear less fluent. Amazon is now countering with a language model it developed in-house, while Google launched its chatbot Bard.
A still unsolved problem when using AI chatbots like ChatGPT are so-called hallucinations. The software sometimes gives completely wrong answers, even if it was only based on correct information. This is because the language models, for example when forming a sentence, ultimately estimate word by word how the sentence could continue.
Amazon solves the problem by constantly keeping the language model on a leash with context to the situation and the household, explained Limp. However, the work on implementing this principle for all Alexa interfaces is far from complete.
At the same time, Amazon gives users new options for controlling devices via the display even without Alexa. The app has a plan view on which all networked devices can be displayed in their positions in the rooms. To do this, the home can be scanned using an iPhone with a laser sensor. Then you tap on the corresponding device in the plan to operate it. Amazon is also launching the Echo Hub, a touchscreen device specifically designed to control the smart home.