Many products now come with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. But lately Alexa has not been doing so well. In addition, Amazon is cutting a lot of jobs in an attempt to spend less money. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become popular. And we should mention that Amazon’s competitors, Microsoft and Google, have created their own voice assistants. So Amazon needs to stop the snowball effect.
Amazon intends to use ChatGPT to modify Alexa to make it smarter, more entertaining, and more profitable in order to reverse this decline. According to internal documents obtained Business Insider, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has a lofty goal. He wants Alexa to think rather than gather information from a database.
Amazon wants to improve Alexa’s entertainment features by adding more unique options, such as interactive video search, customized suggestions and storytelling tools. For example, Alexa might suggest Amazon’s original comedy “The Wonderful Mrs. Maisel” to a customer looking for a show similar to Netflix’s “Emily in Paris” but less fashion-oriented, and explain why. If the user wants to know more about the proposed program, Alexa can give a brief explanation and play the trailer on the screen device. If the user likes the show, they can use voice commands to play it back on their TV.
When a user asks Alexa, “What should I watch tonight?” Alexa can suggest something based on what you’ve searched for before. The user can narrow down the results by asking additional questions, such as “not too romantic” or “Oscar-winning movies.” After browsing, Alexa can look at forums where people are discussing the movie. This can bring in much more relevant information.
AMAZON ALEXA GETTING SMARTER
In addition to expanding video search, Amazon is also looking to improve Alexa’s news summaries and question-and-answer skills. The same leak says that Alexa will offer users more in-depth coverage of each article. It will offer news stories based on users’ preferences. Alexa will also be able to answer questions such as “How many wolves are in Washington state.” What’s more, it will be able to direct users to the sources it uses.
Amazon will also launch a new storytelling feature. It will focus on home users. Alexa will create custom stories based on user requests, for example, an 8-year-old child’s bedtime story “Cat and the Moon” led to a story about “Mittens, the first cat to walk on the moon.” Alexa will also insert characters from the Disney cartoon Frozen into the story if she knows users like them. Kids can also help create stories or idea cards on the Echo Show device screen. The article also mentions that Amazon may join forces with companies like Disney and Lego. Aell, this is nothing new. Back in November 2022, Amazon released a unique feature called “Create with Alexa.” It allows children to create animated stories based on clues.
All of these changes are part of Amazon’s efforts to increase Alexa’s revenue potential. During an earnings call last week, Jesse said that Amazon has sold more than 100 million Alexa devices worldwide. He also said that they should make a more robust language model that should work at the core of Alexa. Jesse believes this will help them achieve their goal of making Alexa the best personal assistant in the world, while opening up new opportunities to make more money.