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Amazon Alexa’s new AI upgrade is set to be delayed by a month, The Washington Post reports.
The delay is allegedly due to a “new version of the assistant giving incorrect answers to test questions at a recent meeting,” according to an anonymous employee.
The updated Alexa, which Amazon says will provide a "smarter and more conversational" experience, now isn’t expected to land until March 31 or later. However, the tech giant still plans to publicly unveil the revamped Alexa virtual assistant at an event in New York on Feb. 26.
This isn’t the first time the project has been pushed back, according to the Post. Amazon staff were reportedly told the upgraded version of Alexa would launch in time for the November 2024 US presidential election, but Amazon was “hesitant to risk customer trust by launching a product that is not reliable.”
When the updated Alexa does finally land, it could bring users a more in-depth experience. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Alexa can act as an “agent,” making actions on a user's behalf without intervention, like calling a taxi. It will also be able to handle multiple prompts at one time (the current iteration can only handle one at a time).
But the revamped Alexa might not come for free. Amazon plans to launch the improved Alexa to some early users free of charge, but it’s reportedly considering a price tag of between $5 and $10 per month for the new and improved version. On the bright side, it’s thought to be fully compatible with all existing Amazon devices that support Alexa.
Amazon has not commented on the reports.
But Amazon might not be the only big tech firm struggling with quality-control-related delays to its AI assistants. Apple is reportedly delaying the rollout of the revamped, AI-enhanced Siri even further amid engineering problems and software bugs, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.