Amazon lays off Alexa employees as 2010s voice-assistant boom gives way to AI
Amazon lays off Alexa employees as 2010s voice-assistant boom gives way to AI
Amazon has had a notoriously hard time making money from Alexa.
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Damn voice assistants are going to be our memory of the 2010s like car phones were to the 80s.
Pretty much everyone I know uses then daily.
Me: Play Whitehorse the band
Google Assistant: Playing Whitehorse the song by some other guy
Me: No, play Whitehorse the Canadian band
Google Assistant: Playing Whitehorse the album by a third guy
Me: Play Achilles Desire
Google Asistant: Playing WhitehorseMe: Play Tu vuò fà l'americano on Spotify
Google Assistant: !?!?!?!?Me: Play Laisse tomber les filles
Google Assistant: !?!?!?Me: Play Les Cowboys Fringants on Spotify
Google Assistant: !?
Me: Play Les Cowboys F R I N G A N T S
Google Assistant: Playing Les Cowboys FringantsI only ever use those junky voice assistants when driving, and they are useless half the time
70% of the time, finding my phone and doing it myself would have been faster than arguing with a dumb speaker. I find them really good for
- setting timers
- playing generic music
- pausing other devices that are playing
- simple questions like current temperature or forecast
When I don't already have my phone in hand.
You put your phone down?
Me: Turn on the kitchen
Alexa: I'm sorry, what device?
Me: KITCHEEEEEEN
It used to work flawlessly for every room in my house, and then a few months ago it just started doing that stupid "what device?" shit.
Not only are voice assistants not improving, they're actively getting worse.
👌👍
I don't know anyone who uses them at all.
"Alexa, add bananas"
"Alexa, 3 minutes"
"Alexa, add 30 seconds"
I think that's just about everything I've ever used it for.
This is better with kids. My niece figured it out and often spoke to Alexa:
Niece: Alexa, add farts and pepperoni pizzas to the grocery list. Niece: Alexa, play baby shark on the bedroom speaker. Niece: Alexa, remind me to kiss my butt in 10 minutes. (Leaves room, her mom was there a few minutes later, in time for the reminder.)
Etc…
When you leave an Alexa enabled echo sitting around 4 to 8 year olds, you get some interesting requests… and entertainment.
True, there's that :)
And of course there are those times that Alexa completely misunderstands. Neither my wife nor I know how it happened, but some months back we discovered "blow job" on our list.
I tried a few times.
"Hey do " "I need you to unlock your device first" "Well, this is stupid"
Every time I try anything other than the most basic things, like setting a timer, it just fails miserably. It would be so useful for hands free operation in the car but even things like calling or navigating are broken beyond belief.
Talking faster is one of the more helpful hints I ever got.
But never try to get your car to play phonk, it'll just play you some funk. Which is cool too, but not what I was going for.
I'll try it but honestly at this point I don't see any hope for it anymore, when the difference between the name Karolina and Carolina is enough to confuse it. Like, I give it first and last name and it says it can't find it even though it heard the name just fine but decided its written with a C instead of a K, so it doesn't exist in my contacts.
Sounds like a personal problem. Maybe language. It works very well for most of my peers. I rarely have issues with friends and family.
Right, you definitely don’t have friends.
Whatever you need to tell yourself.