Alexa at 10: Amazon's assistant is a winner and a failure

November 6th marks 10 years to the day since Amazon surprise-launched a new, cylindrical device called the Echo. It introduced the world to smart speakers, and to the idea that you might be able to get stuff done just by shouting aloud in your living room. But a decade in, what has Alexa really accomplished? The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to talk through the history of Alexa, Amazon's struggles to improve and extend its voice assistant, and the promise of a language model overhaul that might in theory make Alexa far more useful. There's a chance Alexa's second decade might be even more interesting than the first. Further reading: Amazon just surprised everyone with a crazy speaker that talks to you Amazon Echo review: listen up Alexa, where’s my Star Trek Computer? Alexa, thank you for the music The Alexa Skills revolution that wasn’t The Amazon Echo graveyard Amazon’s supercharged Alexa won’t arrive this year Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Far Field Microphones. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am sitting here updating maybe the single most important list in my life. I'm a person who thinks in lists. If you haven't figured that out from listening to this show in recent years, I have a list of all of the stuff that I have to do. I have lists for all of my frequent flyer accounts. Everything is bullet points, everything is lists. It's just how my brand works. But the list that is the most important to me is one I've been keeping for the last several years, and it's called "How to Be a Grown-Up." So I'm sure I've complained about this on the show before, but they never tell you when you're a kid that being an adult is just like a series of small maintenance tasks. And none of them are very hard, but they're impossible to remember to do, and

• 0:47David Pierce?

  because you don't do them, things break horribly. So, over the years, as I've discovered each of these tasks, I've added it to the list and I've added reminders, so that now at intervals, every three months, let's say, I get one that's like, "Hey, change the air filter in the furnace so that the air isn't disgusting in your house." And all of these tasks are like, quick and simple. It's just remembering to do them, or even that they're a thing you're supposed to do, is the problem. The most recent one, by the way, is, "Remember to change the air filter on the dehumidifier that I put in the laundry room, because the laundry room stinks because of all the moisture." Like, there are like eight grown-up tasks that backed all the way into "Change the air filter." So now,

• 1:32David Pierce?

  every couple of months, I have a task that is going to remind me to change the air filter, or at least just like, hose it down so that the laundry room doesn't stink. This is being an adult. It's not that much fun, but here we are. Anyway, we are not here to talk about lists or dehumidifiers. We are here to talk about Alexa. So, this week, Wednesday specifically, is the 10-year anniversary of the very first Amazon Echo. You might remember the one, it kinda looked like a can of tennis balls, or like a Pringles can. It had the blue ring, it had the Far Field microphone. In a surprising way, it was like a fully-formed vision for a new way of computing. And- 10 years later, in a strange way, I think it has actually been both more and

• 2:14David Pierce?

  less transformative than we might have expected. And so we're going to spend the whole hour with Gentoo talking through all of that. How far have we gotten? Where is left to go? Is this actually the right path for the future of computing? Alexa got a lot of people excited. Google with Google Assistant has made huge moves towards this same kind of thing. Siri was around before Alexa, but has changed a lot because of Alexa, I think. And now with AI, we have this giant push towards something very similar. And so the question, as always, is, is this what we want? Is this the right answer? And what can we learn from the first 10 years of Alexa about what it'll take to get there? We're going to get to all of that, but I should just warn you before we start.

• 2:59David Pierce?

  Turn off your Alexa devices. I'm sure I've set them off several times already, and for that, I'm very sorry. But we are going to say that word so, so, so many times in the next hour. Go on a walk, put on headphones. I don't know, like put pillows around you so that you're in just a little fort where it's you and the Vergecast. Do what you gotta do, but turn the speakers off because otherwise it's gonna, it's gonna get rough out there. I have also set mine off two times since I've been sitting here. We're going to get to it together, friends. All that is coming up in just a second, but first, literally, I have to go turn off 30 or 40 devices or else this is going to get really, really, really messy. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.

• 3:40Speaker 01

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• 4:12David Pierce?

  Welcome back. All right, let's just get into Alexa stuff. But before we do, let me just really quickly set the scene. So it's November 6th of 2014, 10 years ago this Wednesday. Theverge.com, it's a website, we're like three years old. And all of a sudden, Amazon just drops this thing on its website. It was in the morning of that day and it just appeared. But let me just read you the headline from our story. This is at 11:56 a.m. on November 6th, 2014. It's by Chris Welch, and I love this headline very much. It says, "Amazon Just Surprised Everyone With A Crazy Speaker That Talks To You." Kind of tells you everything you need to know, right? The thing was called Echo. It was priced at $199.

• 4:57David Pierce?

  You could buy one for $99 if you were a Prime member and if you got an invite. It was a very odd thing. We'd never really seen anything like it before. And going back and reading over those early days, it's very funny to see the reaction to these things. That it was like, why does this exist? What is it going to be for? Why do I have this? And the big idea from Amazon was not voice assistants in general, but that it could be a different, finite, physical thing. That it could be a piece of furniture in your house and that that might change how you use it. I think that kind of worked. Amazon was right about a lot of things, but it was also wrong about a lot of things.

• 5:41David Pierce?

  And I think if you rewind 10 years, a lot has changed and also nothing has changed. Anyway, we have lots to cover. And there's also maybe, maybe some huge Alexa news coming for us that might change the next decade for all of this, too. Lots to get to. We're doing this for the whole show. Let's just get into it. Jen Tooe, hello.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Hi, David. How are you doing?

• 6:05David Pierce?

  I'm good. I have, I have a sick child, so I haven't left my house in several days. Or slept in several days. So I'm not 100% sure where I am or what's going on, but otherwise, otherwise we're good.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I like Delirious David. It could be really fun.

• 6:22David Pierce?

  This might be the longest Verge cast in history. It's very possible. I, I take no responsibility for anything I say in the course of this segment.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:30David Pierce?

  I should just say that at the beginning of every Verge cast, actually, that would be like the, the legal disclaimer that's like, this is all based on fictional people and characters, not real. Okay. So we're here to talk about Alexa, because I guess Alexa is 10. I was trying to think back to this. I'm like, what was the beginning of Alexa? Because if I remember correctly, 10 years ago, Alexa started in a deeply strange way.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Yes, it really was a very interesting launch. I think very much influenced by the spectacular failure of the Fire Phone a few months prior.

• 7:06David Pierce?

  Was that really only a few months before?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  It happened just prior and I think, I actually wasn't deeply into tech journalism at the time, but I, I remember some of this. I mean, you, you reviewed the original Echo, so you were right in the midst of all of this. But looking back, doing some research over the last few weeks, basically, it sounded like Amazon had this really quite impressive new technology. They were looking to debut, but they were so burned by how badly the Fire Phone went down, that they sort of stealth-launched the, their, their new voice assistant, Alexa, which came in the new Echo smart speaker. And this was the first consumer smart speaker that anyone had seen. It just dropped with, I think, just a press release and a video.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  And there was a lot of, you know, reporting of like, whoa, where did this come from? This was, you know, a sort of stealth launch. And it was announced as their, you know, this was a smart speaker that you could talk to, control with your voice. It's had sort of a few key experiences at the start, which was playing music, answering questions from Wikipedia. And it was, you know, it was a really exciting idea and the tech press was very, you know, very into it. Lots of- Oh my goodness, what's Amazon done here? And you know, where, where is this going to go? And there was a lot of excitement, but you couldn't actually get one. And I think they didn't even send out review units. This was how, how much they were, you know, learned from their previous mistakes.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, the Verge actually went out and bought one in order to get to review it. And this was, and it, you had to get on a waitlist, which is something that Amazon's done subsequently with their sort of day one edition products that don't necessarily have a very clear use case yet. And they're kind of putting it out there to sort of explore where the community might, might take it. And that was very much what Echo and Alexa launched as, as a sort of experiment. Although, you know, they revealed later that they had been spending years working on this technology. In particular, the Farfield microphones, which gave you this really cool new ability

• 9:17Speaker 02

  to be able to talk to a voice assistant from anywhere in the room and not be tied to a computer or a phone. And privately, you know, the ambition that they revealed later was that this would be akin to Star Trek's computer. An all-knowing, ever-present computer that can know what you want, do anything you ask it to, and you can converse with in natural language and do anything. Control your lights, destroy your enemies, put up your shields. But you know, you get, you get the idea.

• 9:51David Pierce?

  Small ambitions, really. Super, super chill idea from Amazon at the time.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  So really was exciting technology. So yeah, it, it came out in 2014, November 6th was when they announced it. I think you could start to buy it within a few months. I believe the first review unit you reviewed was January time.

• 10:12David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  It, it wasn't until spring of 2015 that regular people could buy it. And then it finally went on general sale. You didn't have to sign up in, I think it was July of 2015. And I got mine under the Christmas tree. I put it on my Christmas list. My husband got it for me and he's he presented to me Christmas morning, he said, I have no idea what this is, why you want it, but it was on your list.

• 10:41David Pierce?

  You got the original tennis ball, Ken?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  The original tennis ball, yeah.

• 10:46David Pierce?

  I still have mine around here somewhere.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  I do too.

• 10:48David Pierce?

  And I assume it still works.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Mine does. Mine's in my husband's garage and he uses it for music and it works. It works brilliantly. And actually, you know, at the same time for Christmas, I got him something off his list that I had no idea what it was either. It's something called a Craig Pocket Hole jig. I don't know if that, do you have any idea?

• 11:08David Pierce?

  No, that sounds like something you can't legally say on a podcast. Like, we're gonna get an explicit tag for that. I don't know.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, this is a small peek into the Tuie household there, but yes, it was quite funny. These two very different gadgets. What a pocket hole jig does, I found out, is helps make holes in wood so you can build furniture. And in fact, he built the piece of furniture I'm podcasting from right now with that. So that's a nice full circle.

• 11:33David Pierce?

  Big Christmas in the Tuie household in 2015. So what's what's wild about that is, A, you've just brought up a bunch of really awful memories of trying to wrangle an Echo to review. So thank you for that.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  I want to hear that story.

• 11:47David Pierce?

  So I think that the two hardest times I've ever worked for a review unit of something were the the original Snap Spectacles, which I drove two and a half hours to a vending machine in Big Sur and got there right after they sold out the last one. So I bought them from a stranger for $600. That was how I got Snap Spectacles the first time. I literally scalped Snap Spectacles. And then the amount of time that I spent trying to convince someone at Amazon to send me an Echo. I mean, months of being like, I don't, I don't know how to be clear about this. We would like to review this. Can I have one, please, to review? And they were just like, ah.

• 12:33David Pierce?

  And so we just, we just bought one and reviewed it. And I had forgotten the context they were launching this thing into because it is really funny to look back, especially with how important Alexa really quickly became. Like, I think it's very telling that it went from a secret launch to under your Christmas tree in 12 months.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:54David Pierce?

  Once it happened, it happened really fast.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  It did.

• 12:57David Pierce?

  But the way that it happened, it's, I could never tell if Amazon just wasn't sure if it was anything or was desperately afraid it was Fire Phone 2.0. And I think you're probably right that they were afraid it was Fire Phone 2.0. Because like you said, it has also come out since then that this is a thing they'd been working on forever. Jeff Bezos was very behind it and very excited about it and had big ideas about it. They were just terrified it wasn't going to go well, I guess.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:22David Pierce?

  And this was before Amazon was just in full on like YOLO hardware mode. We're just going to try stuff and who cares if it goes well? Like, it was a big bet that they kind of didn't want you to think was a big bet.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. I mean, it was almost sort of like a, you know, as I said, like a test gadget, like, oh, maybe even if a developer gadget, because, you know, that's what they pushed really hard was developers developing skills for Alexa to give it more capabilities. And that's something they've done, they've followed through on in the 10 years we've had the Echo devices, you know? It's not a locked down proprietary device that, you know, is trying to lock you into. So all of my devices in my office are not designed to respond. But unfortunately, the devices in my living room, give me one second.

• 14:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, you're good.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Alexa, turn on Do Not Disturb.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Sorry about that. I think I've got them all. So it wasn't a lockdown proprietary device designed to sort of keep you in Amazon's ecosystem, you know, say like an iPhone was at the time. It really was a sort of, let's see what this can do. And, you know, they developed, they had software development kits. They even had far phone, the far field microphone kit. They, they allowed other manufacturers to put the technology into their devices. It really was sort of like, let's see what we can do with this new technology, which was exciting. It was very exciting time, I think.

• 14:47David Pierce?

  And it worked really well. Like, I went back and read my review from January of 2015. And on the one hand, I had a bunch of issues using the thing. But on the other hand, I still have all those same issues 10 years later, which we'll get to. But I think the extent to which Amazon made sort of a small number of promises about what this thing was going to be really good at, and was basically 100% correct.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:13David Pierce?

  Is really kind of incredible. They're like, you're going to use this thing for music. You're going to use it for basic informational lookups. You're going to use it to set timers. You're going to use it to convert, you know, grams to ounces. And like, check, check, and check. They, they like, really understood what the thing was for from the very beginning in a way that I had forgotten how correct they, they really were.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  They were. I agree. And, you know, it did have, in those early days, it was a big success. You know, I think within the first two years, they'd sold five million devices, is the reports I'd seen, which, I mean, it's not iPhone, but you know, it's still, it's impressive for a brand new piece of technology.

• 15:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, it's easier, it's easier to forget now, but like, smart speaker was not a thing that existed. Like, nobody even knew how to, why you would want this in your house, or what it would do. And the, I don't know if you remember the moment, but I do, of like, walking in and the, the moment where you're just like, play, you know, play whatever's on, play Beyonce, play Taylor Swift. And it just does. And all of a sudden, you're like, oh, I want everything to work like that. And like, spoiler alert, it doesn't. But there were, even at the very beginning, there were just enough of those moments that it was like, as soon as you were in a room with an Echo. You kind of got it. And I feel like it was, there was like a really cool virality to that thing at the very beginning that was very powerful.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what for me, as, as someone who was really just getting in, I said, into sort of tech journalism, but had always been a tech hobbyist, it was a great, it was a real revelation to bring this type of technology into my home as opposed to being in my hand or on my lap or on my desktop, especially for my family. I mean, my kids were very young at this age. I mean, I think my son was three when Alexa, or three or four, and my daughter was maybe two. And, you know, we were, it was great to be able to just call out and, you know, play Beyonce and have a dance party and, and tell stories and jokes. And it really, it helped bring technology into a much more usable space

• 17:16Speaker 02

  in our homes. And, you know, I, even at that age, at that year, in that time, I was feeling that sort of parent guilt of being on devices. And, but, but there's so much still that's great about technology for being a parent, you know, playing music and reading audiobooks are things that we, you know, I always, I wanted to do with my kids, but I didn't want to have to pull out my phone to do it. So it really opened that sort of accessibility to technology in the home. And that's, and I felt like there was so much potential and so much that was exciting at the time. But it also felt like we never really went that far beyond. And we did get a lot of promises from, not, maybe not promises might be too

• 18:00Speaker 02

  strong a word, but a lot of very strong indications from Amazon and, and Jeff Bezos and, and Dave Lim, the Devices and Services Head at the time, that this was going to be so much more. This was going to be the Star Trek computer, or this, that was what they were working towards. And it has been really interesting to kind of see that they have not got there. And that we do use Alexa today very much. And I was, when I was sort of going back through the research here, I looked at my list of what I asked my device to do today versus what I did, you know, five years ago or seven years ago. And it really hasn't changed

• 18:41Speaker 02

  that much. And that, that sort of key difference feels like a big failure. And I'll tell you the reason why is because it's just not that reliable, is you know, the long and the short of it. And this is something I've seen, you know, I'm, I'm in many user groups, Facebook groups, discords, Reddit forums, where people who use Echo and Alexa complain or praise or discuss the device and, and the assistant. And it just seems like there's a universal consensus that it kind of hits a plateau. And it can still mostly do those basic things. But there really hasn't been that next exciting use case, that next exciting

• 19:26Speaker 02

  development for the technology. There's some really interesting use cases, especially around accessibility and elder care, where, you know, they're valuable use cases. People being able, you know, who have accessibility challenges, being able to, you know, open your shades or turn your lights on and off, and being able to, we've got, we had a, we've written, I've written a number of pieces about using Amazon devices to look after elderly parents. There's so many key use cases, but they are solving specific problems. That ultimate idea of this ambient voice assistant that can manage your home, that can be like

• 20:07Speaker 02

  computer in Star Trek, and be this omniscient, omnipresent, artificial intelligence, hasn't arrived. Maybe a lot of people don't want it, but I do. And I'm, I was excited to see that come. And I feel like we just almost feel like further away from that than we were. A lot of problems I encounter when using Alexa in my home is it not doing what I expect it to do. If I've set up a sort of a more complicated routine that I've tried to get it to do things like lock my back door, adjust my thermostat, turn the lights off, dim them in this room, you know, turn the TV on, all, you know, multiple different things at

• 20:48Speaker 02

  once, which is, you know, one of the sort of core use cases now of the smart home side of Alexa. Nine times out of 10, something doesn't work, or it doesn't hear me correctly and it does something differently from what I've asked it to do. And so that's happened, that happens to me so often that I have basically got to the point now where all I use it for is to turn lights on and off, other than those core use cases of playing music in certain timers, which I think everyone can agree Alexa's great at.

• 21:15David Pierce?

  It's very good at it. Well, and I think, I think that's, that's kind of the key open question for me with a lot of this stuff is who and what is to blame for that fact? Because I actually think there are a bunch of possibilities, right? There's, there's one world in which you say, okay, Amazon just didn't do it right. Like you could, as a sort of failure of technology, the, the far field microphone doesn't work, the natural language processing doesn't work, whatever. Cards on the table, I actually don't think it's that one, but I'd be curious to know if you do. There's a version of it that says it's kind of an ecosystem problem that actually what happened is there's just not enough stuff that it's even theoretically able to do that,

• 21:56David Pierce?

  like, the problem with building a Star Trek computer is like the Star Trek computer can do an awful lot of stuff and you have to build all that stuff and they never did. And then there's a third thing that, that basically says like, maybe this just isn't the right interface to do all of that stuff. And I think there might even be other possibilities, but I keep coming back to like, I agree that we didn't get the Star Trek computer, right? Like, I think everyone agrees we didn't get the Star Trek computer. But why didn't we? The longer we go, the more complicated that question becomes to me. And I know you've thought a lot about this and researched a lot about it. Like, do you, do you have a thing over the decade of Alexa you can pinpoint to be like, this is where we kind of lost the thread?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think capitalism.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  I think Alexa and Echo started out as a, you know, a very ambitious, exciting new technology. And then Amazon was like, oh, wow, we've sold, we've sold five million of these in two years. Let's make hundreds more of all shapes and sizes. Let's put it in a ring. Let's put it in earbuds. Let's put it in cars. Let's, let's make small ones, fat ones, short ones, tall ones, ones with screens. And they, I think, the company focused far too much time developing new, killing more Echo devices when they didn't work,

• 23:25Speaker 02

  trying to expand this technology into every corner of our lives, having, encouraging other companies to make Alexa powered speakers and devices, putting it in microwaves, in clocks, and a lot of energy on that, not enough energy on actually developing the core technology. And I'm not an engineer. And as you say, I, I think there has been a challenge that whether the technology is actually at the point where we could have had a better Alexa sooner than today, or a few years' time. But that doesn't mean it couldn't have got better incrementally. And there have been, you know, there's many

• 24:05Speaker 02

  more capabilities of the voice assistant today than there was when it started. But the, the interface, which you alluded to, is the problem there. There are so many things it can do, maybe not very many things you want it to do, but there are many, many things it can do. You know, fart jokes is the obvious one. Lots of, lots of great comedic and entertainment things, not so many useful things. Like you want an, when you think of an assistant, I want an assistant to, you know, order me a pizza, or I want an assistant to plan my day for me. Those types of things never got better. You could connect your Google

• 24:47Speaker 02

  account, your Google Calendar to it, or you could set up, you know, your photos through Amazon Photos. But there just weren't very many core, good use cases that meant, I need to use this device every day. It was very, it's been very much, it's fun to use this device, but there was no kind of breakthrough. This is why I have to have this device in my home, other than some of those niche, more niche use cases we discussed earlier. And I feel like, I mean, Amazon's a hardware company, although it started out as a website, it's really, it has become a hardware company.

• 25:23David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Every, I mean, there's a, you know, in Verge Law and Tech Journalist and Law, when you go to an Amazon event, one of their fall hardware events, you were prepared to write up 75 new gadgets in 30 minutes.

• 25:36David Pierce?

  What was it, was it 2018 in the year that it was just 700,000 new Alexa gadgets all at once? That was the year of the clock and the microwave.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:45David Pierce?

  Yeah, anything that exists in your house, now it has Alexa.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Now it has it, yes.

• 25:48David Pierce?

  Do you want that? Doesn't matter. You have it now. That was the, that was the pitch.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  But I could, I mean, I can see the value there, like connect all the things and then Alexa can do everything you want it to do. But it was the getting Alexa to do everything you want it to do part that they never made better. You had to use the Alexa app, which is one of, is probably the single worst piece of smart home software I have ever used.

• 26:12David Pierce?

  I agree with that.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  It has incrementally got better, but it is still really difficult.

• 26:18David Pierce?

  I was just about to say, it's, it's night and day better than it was even a few years ago, and it's still pretty bad. Like, it's, it's rough.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  And they've tried to address that, you know, they came out with the new Echo Hub, so you have an interface that you can use. But again, it was, the voice interface is what needed to get better. The voice interface needed to be, we need to be able to talk to a voice assistant in the way you can talk to, well, not you can, but Picard could talk to Star Trek's computer. Just say what you're thinking, say what you want to happen, and it, do it for you. It understand and be able to do it for you. And we've never got anywhere closer. Alexa's never understood better what you want. Than she did on day one. That never got better.

• 27:04David Pierce?

  Which I think is that, I think that's the perfect way to put it because one of the things I always enjoy about using Alexa just from a sort of like perverse doing technology science work is you go in and you look at something that went wrong and just, the question is always like, did it misunderstand me? And actually, it very rarely does, at least in my case. I go in and it like, I can say even very complicated, long, you know, multi-word, long-sentence things. It's transcription is very good and, and it's, it's natural language processing is very good. And so it's like, it knows what I want. Right? Like that is not the challenge. And you would think that yelling at a speaker from across the room would be a hard problem.

• 27:48David Pierce?

  And it, and it is, but actually, again, from pretty close to the very beginning, Amazon more or less solved that problem.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:55David Pierce?

  There's somewhere after that first step of like, I have declared my intention to my device and my device has registered that intention correctly. And then it falls apart. And it has never, that part, like you're saying, has never gotten, I would say even meaningfully better, much less very good.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  No, I agree. And, and that's where the Star Trek computer idea came in, you know, that this device could sort of manage your home for you. I mean, Alexa leaned hard into the smart home as soon as they realized that this was, you know, a great use case for voice control. And, you know, even though it wasn't part of the initial plan, but to begin with, it was incredibly clunky. And, you know, I, I've spent the last eight years trying to use Alexa to run my smart home smoothly. And my sort of touch point throughout this time has been like a good morning routine. Like this is what you always hear about when you talk about

• 28:52Speaker 02

  voice control and smart home. It's like, you can set up this good morning routine, good night routine, I'm leaving routine and your whole home will just work magically. And I, from the days of Wink, remember Wink?

• 29:02David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  That was one of the first.

• 29:04David Pierce?

  I try not to remember Wink, but every once in a while.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  That was one of the first smart home hubs that worked with Alexa. And you used to have to say, "Trigger my good morning routine." And my husband still says, "Trigger" to every time he asks Alexa to do something. Oh, my goodness. I'm sorry.

• 29:24David Pierce?

  This is good. We're leaving all of these in. This is, this is the point, people.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  There are so many in my house.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Alexa, do not disturb. See, this, it never gets right. But yes, so and over the years I have tried to, you know, it's sort of as had been my touch point, like whether we have reached a sort of magical moment where the smart home just works. And you know, this kind of goes back, you know, it circles back to Star Trek with, you know, I think the infamous line, and I can deliver it in an English accent, and I will do my best. Computer, tea, Earl Grey, hot. That was good.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  I don't do a good Picard, sorry. I have to get my Shakespeare on. It was solid. I approved of that. But yes, you know, so and for me, it was coffee, black, strong. And I wanted, I wanted to get out of my bed. I wanted the lights to turn on. I wanted BBC Radio Two to start playing. I wanted a coffee to start brewing, maybe, you know, my shower to start running, thermostat to adjust, and then say 20 minutes later, the kids' lights in their room go on, their alarm goes off, you know, things that I would have to go and do manually myself, but having a smart home assistant do all of this for me, save me time in the morning, make me less stressed, make everyone happy.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  And so the first problem I came across was a personal one, but one that really kind of goes to another key area where the smart home in general and Alexa hasn't succeeded, which is context. So my husband has been for most of his career, a shift worker. So he works 24 hour shifts and then he would come home and sleep for 12 hours. So for me, having a motion sensor or using voice to start my morning routine was not going to work because I would wake him up. And also, I only wanted the bedroom lights to turn on when he wasn't there, not when he was there. So, you know, there was not, there's nothing that Alexa could do to differentiate, didn't have the context of what was happening in the room. Then the other issue was trying to use a motion sensor to trigger a routine.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  It's something you've only really been able to do in the last couple of years. Motion sensing support for Alexa was really spotty for years. It worked through Zigbee initially, but nine times out of 10, a Zigbee motion sensor you connected to Echo would either not stay connected or wouldn't work.

• 31:52David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  And again, maybe not Amazon's problem, but you know, when you're connecting to different ecosystems, you need your smart assistant to be able to troubleshoot these things for you so that you don't have to spend 30 hours a week troubleshooting your smart home to get these things to work.

• 32:08David Pierce?

  Right.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  And then the fresh brewed coffee. This is a capability that we should have had years ago. You can rig up a smart plug if you have the right type of coffee machine that has a physical on off switch, or you have a smart Alexa connected coffee machine that on average costs between $1,000 and $2,000. There's one from Spin and then there's one recently from Bosch. There's just, there's just so much friction. So I'm testing the Bosch coffee maker and in theory it should make me a latte when I say, "Good morning."

• 32:50Speaker 02

  But I spent, in preparation for when I was sort of researching all of this, I spent about four hours trying to get it to work.

• 32:59David Pierce?

  This is, this is the like key Alexa calculus that has never tipped in Alexa's favor, right?

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:07David Pierce?

  A lot of what you just described, you can in theory.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:10David Pierce?

  Set up, right? Like the, one of the things Amazon has tried to do, to its credit, is enable some of this stuff, right?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:17David Pierce?

  And like, I get a lot of crap on this show for hating Apple shortcuts because it gives you a lot of power, but it is essentially a like really complicated scripting language. And so, sure, right? If you are willing to do the work to learn all of that, great. The problem is then you, you've spent a bunch of money, you've done a ton of work, it doesn't work all the time. And then now I'm doing a bunch of maintenance. And so at each step along the way, you've lost a significant part of what makes this thing compelling in the first place. And now you're just doing, you're like doing a bit trying to get Alexa to work, right? It feels cool, but it's not actually less work.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  No, it's more work.

• 33:56David Pierce?

  Right. And so you get to a point where the math of how much time am I spending to make coffee every morning just doesn't tip in Alexa's favor. And it's true with so many things. And that, that has always been the thing for me, that it's like, yeah, I could make the good morning routine work, but it would only work half the time. And I'm gonna go have to fix all the things it doesn't get right every morning. And it's just not, I'll just walk into the room and turn the light on. That works.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Oh, David, you're breaking my heart.

• 34:28David Pierce?

  No, but it's, and it kills me too, because I want all that to work. And like, once a year, I go through the work of setting all this stuff up again. And then the third time in a row, it doesn't work. I'm like, ah, never mind. And I just tear it all out of the wall again.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Or it works, but there's one thing actually that you didn't, you'd forgot that you don't want it to do that one time. Like, your son's sleeping and they don't have to go to school that day, but it still turns the light on in their room. You know, so, and again, that goes back to the context. You know, it needs to know more about your, your home and be more intelligent and not just command and control.

• 35:02David Pierce?

  Uh, that is actually a perfect segue into all of where this stuff is headed, uh, which I think we're 10 years in and we're kind of at the beginning of maybe a next decade of new things on this front. Uh, so we're gonna take a really quick break. Will you stick around and talk to me about all that stuff too?

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Of course. I will be right here.

• 35:19David Pierce?

  All right, good. We'll be right back.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 35:57David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Jen 2 is still here. Hi Jen.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 36:01David Pierce?

  I just like talking about Alexa. This is fun. This is delightful. I have been on the hill of voice assistance will change everything for a very long time, and I have mostly been wrong. So let's talk about the ways the future might prove me and you right.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  One day.

• 36:18David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  How long do we get?

• 36:20David Pierce?

  Let's say 10 more years. I think the first decade, not so much for us. Decade number two, maybe.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  We're right in there.

• 36:28David Pierce?

  Hard maybe. So let's talk about kind of where we are at this moment, both in terms of what Alexa is and kind of what we know about where it's about to go. And I think you, I think relatively recently, got to go see some version of like the perfect platonic ideal of an Alexa system, right? That like Amazon's fever dream of what your house might look like?

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yes, I did. I went for a tour of Amazon's Smart Home Lab, which is in their Seattle headquarters. And I was excited when they suggested the idea. And they said, you know, we can show you everything we have set up. And it's sort of like an idealistic, like this is what the sort of ultimate Alexa-powered ambient smart home looks like, you know? Everything is connected and set up, and you just need to say a few words. I was hoping for a bit more motion sensing action, like ambient action. But it was, you know, this was, this was kind of like their ideal. So I was expecting, honestly, to be kind of blown away.

• 37:34David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, if ever it's going to feel like magic, it should be

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:37David Pierce?

  literally Amazon with infinite resources and all of the people who made this thing at its disposal

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:43David Pierce?

  should be able to make it feel like magic.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  They should.

• 37:47David Pierce?

  I'm not, I'm not looking forward to where we're headed here.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, I'm gonna say it, it was very disappointing. Oh no, how so? Very nice apartment, beautiful views, sunny day too, Seattle.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  But it was pedestrian, you know, they had everything, they, you know, hundreds of devices that could work with the voice assistant, echo devices everywhere, you know, robot vacuums, Ring devices, fire TVs, and then lots of third-party things. But they had like Lutron cassette lights, had Switchbot robot fingers, tons of fun gadgets. But ultimately, it was all still command and control. And, you know, as we talked about. And Amazon has said, along with, in the same breath of, you know, this, our aspiration is a Star Trek computer, our aspiration is an ambient smart home, a sort of,

• 38:49Speaker 02

  a home that responds to you proactively, without you having to do anything, or do some, very minimal, just say a few words, or maybe press a button, and what you want happens. And they had set up in the house, different routines in each room. So there was like a watch TV routine, there was a leaving the home routine, and of course, a good morning routine, which I was excited to try out. There's always a good morning routine. I even got into the bed and got ready to have to start my day. And again, there are no motion sensors, so I had to, I had to say a command to get things going. And it did the normal stuff,

• 39:31Speaker 02

  turn the lights on, started the shower, which is something I've always wanted, but again, really expensive. If you've looked into Moen or Cola's smart showers, it's not cheap. So, you know, it just didn't sort of have that ambient feel. And, and also, it was really slow and really laggy. And again, I'm like, guys, this is, this is your sort of ultimate setup, and you're basically just reaffirming my feeling that this is still basically a remote control for your home, which, which is great, that has its use case, but it is not Star Trek's computer, and it is not an ambient smart home.

• 40:13David Pierce?

  I actually, I love that distinction. Because I think one other thing you and I have talked about over the years and that I've been forever fascinated by is universal remotes. Which I actually think as a gadget are sort of woefully underdeveloped and underconsidered. And the idea that I can just sit and hold a thing and it becomes like a magic wand for all of my gear, strikes me as A, much more attainable than some of the other stuff we're working on, and B, really cool and useful. Like, I have, I have six or seven remotes just for the stuff here in my basement. And in terms of like, actual human utility, putting all of that into one usable device makes a lot of sense. And so I think to your point, it's not nothing to turn this into something that can go do an individual thing on your behalf, right?

• 40:57David Pierce?

  Having like, one interface for all of that stuff, even a command at a time, is not nothing. It's also nowhere near the like, big ambient computing, something that can do everything for you. And a word that Amazon has used more and more over time is proactively. Right? Like, the idea is not just that you should be able to ask it to do it for you and it will.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:19David Pierce?

  It should be able to do it for you.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:22David Pierce?

  Like, just the fact that you have to say "good morning" in order to tell it that you've woken up and to start the routine, is actually a failure of the system. It should just know you've woken up and do the things for you. Right? Like, and again, all that technology is there.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:35David Pierce?

  There's these people, like, again, it costs a billion dollars, but like, you can buy the Eight Sleep thing that tracks your sleep and the, the, the pieces of the puzzle are sitting there and Alexa was supposed to be the thing that put them all together in such a way that you didn't have to. And, and right now, we're still on the universal remote phase.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Well, and to Alexa's credit, it is, if there is one thing that is more difficult to navigate than voice control, it is a universal remote.

• 42:03David Pierce?

  There are like eight Logitech Harmony owners out there screaming and just, I want you to know I hear you and I love you, but it's true.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  But, you know, universal remotes have their place, but there's also a reason why there are very few of them around. But what the problem with a universal remote and with Alexa as it is today is that specific nomenclature. The fact that you have to say specific words to get Alexa to do something or press a specific sequence of buttons on your universal remote. But yeah, it's that the ambient part is the intelligence and none, neither of those things currently have the intelligence. And, you know, there are, that's where, that's the next step in the smart home.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Whether it's Amazon that can bring that intelligence or another company, there are many, many trying. That's what we need. We need the systems that can understand context, that can understand everything that's in our home. I mean, when I spoke with Dave Limp, when they had their last event in October of 2023, he, you know, he said, we are feeding all of every smart home manual ever made into Alexa to make it more intelligent so that it knows the devices in your home. That's what it needs, that knowledge, but then it also needs the intelligence to be able to act on them. For example, I have a smart faucet in my kitchen.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  And if I go up to it to, or I can use, I can use Alexa to have it do fun things like dispense two cups of water at 90 degrees. You know, perfect for a baby bottle. You can set these presets, but I have to, I'll be standing in front of the faucet and I will have to say, Alexa, ask Moen to dispense two cups of water at 90 degrees. And sometimes it will say, okay, and sometimes it will say, I can't do that. Please set up your devices again. Something along those lines. And then my, my husband was watching me try and play with this the other day and he said, shouldn't it just know that you're standing in front of the kitchen faucet?

• 44:18Speaker 02

  And when you say, I want two cups of hot water. Just do it. And it should and it could. That is a future we could have. There is enough technology, just even in Echo devices and also in devices like from Apple and Google that you have in your home, their smart speakers, things like UWB, radar, there's the technology is there.

• 44:40David Pierce?

  I mean, for God's sake, Amazon owns Ring, which makes a drone with a camera that will fly around your house. Like.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Allegedly.

• 44:46David Pierce?

  Yeah, fair. It allegedly will do that. It's a fair point. But yeah, like, again, and I think we should just say and then move on from the fact that like, all of this requires a deep like, privacy trade off.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:02David Pierce?

  In a way that should make people uncomfortable.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:05David Pierce?

  And is is a trade off that we are going to need to reckon with as people. If that technology is ever going to get to what you're describing, we are going to have to make some like, very conscious decisions about, I want my speaker to be aware that I'm standing at the sink. And we should just leave that conversation for another time, because I think that is a place where like, everyone is going to have to make personal decisions about how they feel about that stuff. But that is what it requires.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  I do need to just interject because we've gone almost an hour and I haven't mentioned the M word, but this is where Matter could help.

• 45:38David Pierce?

  Oh, God. Well, that's the first cast, everybody.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  So whilst it's up to the platforms, how they implement, and my money would be on Amazon using the cloud. Gosh, not sure why, but anyway, a platform, a smart home platform using Matter can keep all of that information entirely local and use that data locally. So, but we'll put a pin in that.

• 46:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll have many more chances to have that version of the conversation. But to your point, this is. The future everyone imagines, right? I think that the really interesting point we're at right now is anyone thinking about this kind of ambient computing future thinks about it roughly the same way. The goal is the same. And we're at a moment right now where everyone thinks it's the same technology that's going to get us there. Which again, brings us to Dave Limp a year ago, who, I don't know, I guess in retrospect, like way pre-announced a gigantic reboot of Alexa. Because that is, am I overstating it to put it like that?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  No, no, I mean, they, they, he got on stage and demoed a new, very, much more conversational Alexa. That was the kind of, the big show off was being able to talk to the voice assistant naturally, not having to constantly repeat the wake word and have it, it had more personality, like it was kind of joking with him and it, that sort of natural conversation, which was, again, the sort of the North Star, the Star Trek computer, being able to speak naturally and have a conversation is something they've been working towards. And this demo did show that it was almost a reality. They also, at that event, talked about how Alexa was going to be able to do more of what

• 47:29Speaker 02

  we've been talking about here and sort of do more intelligent responses. One of the things is sort of multi-step routines. So you could create something just by telling Alexa a list of things you want it to accomplish, you know, more like, like to a computer and have it just reel those off without you having to go into an app and set up a routine and then set up a trigger. So you don't have to spend your time programming your smart home. You just think, oh, actually, I want this to happen right now. Alexa, do it for me and it will do it. And then, you know, this, this is a sort of their new vision. How it's going to get there, I mean, ultimately, what I would like is something like that,

• 48:14Speaker 02

  I would like to be able to have Alexa follow through on the commands that I have, but also understand the context of them. So for example, an idea I sort of came up with, what I would love to be able to say, something like. Alexa, tell my son not to forget his science project. You know, set the alarm when he leaves in the morning. Then unlock the back door at 4pm for the plumber. Lock it again at five and then preheat the oven at six o'clock. But if I'm running late, adjust the time, you know, so you don't burn the house down. And it would need, but Amazon's going to need a lot more context to be able to do this type of thing. And this is the type of thing that we're already seeing hints of in the other ecosystems.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Like that's some of what Siri may be able to do in terms of the intelligence Siri, not the smart home control, but understanding like that I'm running late. Oh, now there goes Siri.

• 49:08David Pierce?

  This is great.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  She's on it. Don't worry.

• 49:11David Pierce?

  I'm glad. I look forward to what she comes back with.

• 49:16David Pierce?

  There it is.

• 49:18David Pierce?

  Siri, everybody. All right, keep going.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Sorry. I forgot about that one.

• 49:23David Pierce?

  This is great. We're leaving all of this in. This is the most, this is a real show, not tell thing we're doing here.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  I can go with Google next. Hey, Google, you want to pipe up? No, he, it doesn't listen. There's one right here.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Nothing, nothing.

• 49:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah. This is why the Alexa team is not afraid of Google and Apple.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Okay, sorry. But yeah, and I, that context, context aware voice assistant is the kind of, you know, the holy grail for me. That is the computer. That is the ambient technology. And, you know, you could, you know, speaking of like the type of technology that Apple said it's bringing to Siri with the contextually aware Siri, you could imagine, and this may be something a little bit out there and might scare most people.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Is that, it's something like this. Okay, so it's soccer night. I'm working in my home office. My mom is bringing the kids home. And she's texted me that she's bringing a frozen pizza. So my smart assistant sees the text message, knows that it's my mom and not me, because I'm also mom.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  And Starts preheating the oven, you know, so that the frozen pizza can go in as soon as they get home, unlocks the door at six thirty, which is when they said they were going to arrive, turns on the air purifier because it knows the oven's on. And then after we've had dinner, the robot vacuum will just automatically start a quiet, clean and mop of the kitchen. And then if someone has thought to shut the dishwasher, it will start running automatically. And then I sit down on the couch and without having to say anything or do anything, because UWB sensors in my HomePod minis or my Alexa soundbar know that we're sitting on the couch, you know, the lights dim down, the TV turns on, and it

• 51:19Speaker 02

  knows the kids are there. So it starts playing something family friendly that it knows we like watching, like say, last night's recording of The Voice. Yes, I do like The Voice. And then at eight thirty, it turns off because it knows it's bedtime. Maybe my Mo and Smart faucet, if they had one for the bath, would start running a bath for me at the right temperature, turn the lights on upstairs, play some soothing music. And I haven't had to do anything. My assistant and my home have, has pulled all that together for me. I mean, is that the dream? Or does that slightly terrify you?

• 51:56David Pierce?

  I mean, both, to be honest. And I think, I think that's mostly the dream. I think there are bits and pieces of that, that I think the, the sort of perfectly proactive assistant is actually the wrong answer. Like, one thing I've learned over time, talking to people who work at streaming companies, is that the idea of you just sit down and it plays the perfect thing for you is actually not correct. It's, it's the like, the, the Amazon thing of like, what if they could just ship you the stuff that you want? Like, people like to shop, right? People like to browse. And even the thing that is technically the perfect thing for you to watch.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  David, David, you don't have a thirteen year old and a sixteen year old.

• 52:34David Pierce?

  Listen, I didn't say it's a good thing that people like to do this, but people do like to do this. And, and the idea of like, if you sit down, even if what you want to watch is the voice, if it just puts the voice on for you, it feels weird. And so I think there, there are things about like, if my house just starts drawing me a bath at bath time, there's something odd about that. But if it, if it can chime in and be like, hey. Would you like me to? Right. That, that starts to feel really valuable, right? So I think there's a really interesting interface question there where it's like Friday night and it's like, oh, is it movie night tonight? And you're like, yes, it is. And then it does the whole thing. Whereas instead you have to come in. Right. And, and when you have a personal assistant, you talk to them, right? It's not like. I know. I don't want to talk.

• 53:15David Pierce?

  But like, if you had a human personal assistant, you would talk to them and they would ask you questions. And that's, that's a fine set of interactions. Yeah. You wouldn't have to say their name and then a series of words in the correct order, right? So I think there's, there's a bunch of really interesting interface questions there. But with the, with the LLM stuff that everybody is betting on right now.

• 53:37David Pierce?

  The thing I keep thinking about is that what it will definitely do, I feel very good about the fact that large language models are going to make understanding your queries better, right? Like we, we have ample evidence now that for things like speech to text and for natural language processing and text to speech, LLMs are very good. They're better than the systems we had before. So I think the idea that I'm going to be able to say that paragraph of things that you just said to Alexa and it will understand them, I feel very good about that. Yeah. But as we've seen for 10 years, that's only part of the process. Yeah. And LLMs don't solve any of the other parts of the process. And I think it, it like, I think your, your point about what Google and Apple can do here is, is really

• 54:22David Pierce?

  important because A, they both have access to your phone, which gives them location data. It gives them lots of information about your contacts, which is really important, all this kind of stuff. I also think Google has a big advantage because it's connected to things like your calendar and your email more intimately in a lot of ways, and also has like your web search, which is very powerful. Apple gets a lot of that because if it's Google deals, like there are some weird antitrust things going on here, but Amazon doesn't have any of that and really doesn't have a path to getting any of that. Unless you feed it to it, which is an extra step on your, on your part. Right. Sure. And I think like, do I want to give Alexa access to my Gmail is again. Personal question, there are probably upsides to doing that over time.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Kind of like trip it, forward my emails.

• 55:06David Pierce?

  Right, exactly, exactly. But I think, like, I have found myself using Gemini a lot to look for information in my Google stuff. And that's really powerful. And Amazon just has none of that. And so Alexa has none of that. And I think if I were to like galaxy brain all of the crazy gadget launches Amazon has had over the years, they are so desperate to put Alexa in front of you at all times, that you will just accidentally end up giving it all of that information. Seriously, like, and I think that's not a crazy strategy, right? To say, if you're wearing glasses that have Alexa baked in, you're going to talk to Alexa more. And thus, you're going to tell it more information, you're going to have it remind you of more stuff. It might gain more information just by listening. Like, there are a lot of

• 55:49David Pierce?

  things it can do with that kind of ubiquity. But A, it doesn't have that. B, it's not going to anytime soon. And C, even that, I don't think is enough. So I get to this point where I'm like, maybe Alexa is about to get a lot better at the thing it was already good at, and not that much better at anything else. But maybe that's cynical.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Well, it definitely feels like there is a big reset coming. I mean, we got the tease of the new Alexa, or the remarkable Alexa, as it's been reportedly referred to. There was a big piece by the Wall Street Journal, sort of talking about all the problems Amazon has had. And that was the rumor is that it's remarkable. I think, I'm not sure about remarkable. Not a big fan of that. But anyway.

• 56:32David Pierce?

  Also, kind of a sick burn of 10 years of Alexa.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:34David Pierce?

  It's like, we had pedestrian Alexa, and now we have remarkable, yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  But, you know, they have a new hardware chief, Panos Panay.

• 56:43David Pierce?

  Friend of the Vergecast.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Friend of the Vergecast, who did not want to talk about new Alexa the last time you had him on.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Not at all. But he did hint quite heavily that it's coming. And this year, I picked up on, in that conversation. And I think there is a big reset. And we haven't had a fall event this year. It's the first time in a while. So we haven't had dozens of new devices. Instead, there's been dribs and drabs of news coming out over the last few weeks that you would have totally been part of a big event. Like, there's a new outdoor Aero. Ring has finally got 24/7 recording. New Kindle.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Lots of Kindles. So many Kindles. There's also more devices going away. We know that Echo Dot with Clock, R I P, that went a few months ago. Rumor has it that Echo Show 15 is on the outs. It's been out of stock for a long time. More services being killed. Alexa Together, which was their home care service, which I really, I thought was a great service. But, you know, we're seeing a big reset. We've seen Andy Jassy has been reported that he's sort of culling the Devices and Services Division. But I, I'm hoping that this is all in a sort of streamlined effort. For what I said at the beginning of the conversation is that they, they had too much emphasis on gadgets and gizmos

• 58:06Speaker 02

  and not enough on the core value proposition of what the assistant can offer. And trimming the craft and hopefully bringing everything together in a much more focused, usable way with a, you know, better UI, better voice interface, powered by L L M's. I think, I know they have their own Alexa L L M, but there's been reports that they're also going to be using, I think, is it Claude? So there's, there's lots going on. It's just a question of are they going to get it right? Is it going to be a new hardware shift? Which would be a tough sell because there's a lot of, a lot of echoes out there.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  But also I kind of feel like we need it, like the Echo has sort of become, you know, a throwaway gadget. You know, I saw so many reports in my research of people like, well, I have three or four Echo Dots in cupboards and drawers and just don't use them because they're commoditized, cheap. And you can buy them for $18. And there's no real expectation of anything great coming out of a cheap piece of hardware on your table. You know, I, there's, it's, it's definitely a moment where I think they have the opportunity to do something pretty.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Exciting, just like they did 10 years ago when they launched Alexa on November 6, 2014. But are we going to get it?

• 59:38David Pierce?

  Do you think Amazon is right to still call it Alexa? I think what question we've been asking a lot is, are the are the old ways of thinking about these voice assistants the right way to think about the next wave of them? And Google is basically killing Google Assistant in favor of Gemini. Apple still seems to be using Siri, but Apple Intelligence is very much the sort of bigger umbrella brand than Siri is at this point. Amazon appears to still be all the way bought into Alexa as the thing and is very much going to sort of bake new technology into all of the existing stuff rather than just kind of wiping the slate and starting over. Do you think that's the right call?

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so from talking to all three people at all three of companies about this, it sounds like the technology, there's a there's a real disconnect between what the current voice assistants can do and what the L L Ms can do. And the L L Ms cannot do a lot of what the current voice assistants can do. Like, I had heard rumors from one company that they basically were having to come, you know, rebuild everything they had done for their previous voice assistant for their new L L M. And it's like, why are we doing this? This, you know, reinventing the wheel. So it feels to me like a merge, a meshing or emerging of the two makes the most sense. But again, not an engineer, this may be a technical impossibility.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  There may be too much technical baggage buried underneath Alexa and Siri and Google's Assistant that just will not mesh with the future pathway. But I think we need to keep the names. We do not need new names. That that's just, that seems like a nonstarter to me. And especially for Amazon, I mean, they spent a decade building a very recognizable brand that they constantly tell me people love, like, people love their Alexa.

• 1:01:24David Pierce?

  I think that's true. I think people think Siri sucks and Alexa is great.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:29David Pierce?

  Limited but great.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  And Google's smarter.

• 1:01:32David Pierce?

  Yeah, well, Google Assistant is kind of, it's like the the nerdy weird kid in the corner, right? That it's like, it's very cool, but no one really talks about it. But it's, it does some impressive stuff. But I do think it's true that I think, I think you could have made the case that walking away from Siri would have been a smart move for Apple.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:49David Pierce?

  Just given the baggage of Siri. I don't think Alexa has that baggage. I think people. Mostly have settled into this thing is for music and timers. But like you said, it costs $18, so who cares? And now if Amazon can say, oh, this thing that you bought now has incredible new capabilities. That's really powerful.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:08David Pierce?

  I, I, it remains to be seen whether that is the case. And I think with a lot of L L Ms, we continue to be sold a bill of goods that is not based in reality in a lot of ways.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19David Pierce?

  But also, I tend to think you're right. I, I, I could imagine a world in which Amazon is like, here's a whole new brand. We're changing everything. But also like, these things are everywhere. They're pretty simple hardware and it's all in the cloud anyway. So like, if they can just suddenly upgrade everyone's speakers in some massive way, that becomes, that becomes pretty powerful.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Well, my, uh, original Echo, which is in my husband's garage, according to Dave Limp at the event last year, will be updated to support the new Alexa.

• 1:02:48David Pierce?

  It might have another 10 years in it.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  It might.

• 1:02:50David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  I mean, that's pretty impressive and that's, that's a whole infrastructure that I don't see Amazon getting rid of. And yeah, I think that is, that's, that's the right move. Make Alexa smarter and it, the capabilities and the possibilities just get, get really interesting. I'm excited to see what they can do. I just want them to hurry up and do it.

• 1:03:11David Pierce?

  You and me and everybody at this point. But here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna have to come back when they launch it, which as far as we know, might be in like the next couple of weeks.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Next week.

• 1:03:19David Pierce?

  Yeah. But we're both going to review whatever the new Alexa is on the very first Echo. Uh, I'm gonna find mine, it's somewhere and we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna have 10 year old hardware with brand new software and we're gonna see if it, if magic has really happened in 10 years.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  That sounds like a good plan.

• 1:03:33David Pierce?

  Awesome. All right, Jen, thank you as always. Again, I suspect we will see you again very soon.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Thanks.

• 1:03:39David Pierce?

  See ya.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:03:41David Pierce?

  All right, we gotta take one more break and then we're gonna come back and take a question from the Vergecast hotline. We'll be right back.

• 1:04:26David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866 VERGE11. The email is [email protected]. We love all of your questions. Please keep sending them. Keep calling in. Hearing from you is the absolute best. We got a bunch more episodes to do this year. Cannot wait for your hotline questions. Love everything that everybody's been sending. Thank you, as always. This week, we have both a question and a product idea about AirPods. Let's hear it.

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  Hey, Vergecast. This is Kyle calling in from Texas, and I had a question for y'all. I was listening to your episode on the new hearing aid updates to Apple's AirPods. And while the new update sounds exciting, and I'm looking forward to seeing how people benefit from the testing capabilities and hearing aid functionality, your discussion got me thinking. Don't kill me, but I sometimes do the same thing that y'all mentioned, where if I'm ordering something, I just take one of them out. And in most social settings nowadays, that seems to pretty consistently communicate that you're listening to the other person, especially since nearly all headphones pause whatever you're listening to. But since that doesn't work for those using AirPods as hearing aids, I had an idea. What if Apple added LEDs to their headphones?

• 1:05:37Speaker 05

  This would, I keep copying Samsung's new models, but even though it would take some time for everyone to learn, it might allow you to tell if someone else wearing AirPods can hear you speaking to them. It would kind of be like the way Apple tried to have eyesight on the Vision Pro communicate where the user is paying attention, but hopefully not in a way that's deeply in the uncanny valley. I thought it was a fun idea, but maybe we'll instead, we'll just get used to people wearing headphones in public. But I was really interested to hear if y'all thought it might work. Thanks again so much for taking my call. Love the show. Bye.

• 1:06:12David Pierce?

  Okay, I shared this call for two reasons. One, because I actually think it's an awesome idea. And I think the idea of putting some kind of notification LED on AirPods to signal, really whatever you want it to signal, but in this case, it would be to signal that they're in hearing aid mode, actually fits with what we're seeing from a lot of technology right now, right? He mentioned the face stuff on the Vision Pro. But to me, this sounds more like what you see on the latest run of smart glasses. Probably the easiest example is the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, where they actually have a light that says essentially, you're being recorded. And I think that stuff is still pretty new and we're still figuring it out.

• 1:06:54David Pierce?

  And I mean, you rewind back to Google Glass and the idea of there being a light suggesting that you're being recorded didn't actually help anybody and just made everything feel gross and bad and didn't solve a lot of problems. But I think we're at a point now where those kinds of things can be communicated, right? Where you're saying, okay, this is, this is listening to you in some way. And I actually think the idea of using an LED to mean essentially you are being captured by my device in some meaningful way, kind of works, right? Whether it's the camera is on and I can see you and I'm taking video of you, or my headphones are capturing what you're saying and feeding it to me. Either one of those, if you pull it all the way down, is just you are being captured in some way.

• 1:07:37David Pierce?

  And I think if that's all we need these LEDs to signify, that can really work. It'll take some marketing work to get people to understand that and it'll take some time for it to sort of societally catch on. But I would actually rather land in that place than just pure, constant acceptance of headphones, because if we get to the point where you're wearing headphones and I still assume that I can talk to you, I think that's bad. And I think that's wrong, frankly, in a lot of ways. Headphones as a signal of leave me alone are actually really powerful and valuable. And also, it's just true that a lot of the times when you're wearing headphones, you can't hear other people. So having a much more aggressive signal that says, I can hear you,

• 1:08:20David Pierce?

  I am capturing you in some way, works for me. So I think that's a great idea. I hope Apple does something like it. I think we might be giving Samsung a little too much credit. Samsung just like put LEDs on the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro that don't really do anything. I think they light up when you turn on the Find My feature, which like, sure. But they can't show battery, they don't show. When they're, you know, in various modes, there are a bunch of things they could do there. I think the lights actually look good. In Samsung's case, they're mostly just aesthetic, but it's proof that you could do something like this. And I think that's very compelling. So I'm in favor of this idea 100%. I hope Apple does it. But the other reason I share this is because we get a lot of feedback from people when Chris Welch and I talked about

• 1:09:04David Pierce?

  the hearing aid mode on the AirPods. And especially when we talked about the societal shift that is coming for headphones. And I think I've been pretty blasé about it to a certain extent, right? Like, I look at my nephews, who are both teenagers. They, most of the time, just have one AirPod in. And I don't really think anything of it. But then I talked to lots of other people who view that as rude and off-putting and deliberately removing yourself from a social situation in some way. I'm confident they don't see it that way, but it might be that way anyway. So I think that piece of it is complicated and it's not going to get easier.

• 1:09:45David Pierce?

  But if we want these devices to be these kinds of always-on augmented reality devices that are genuinely useful for people's health, but also more and more useful just in day-to-day life for people, that is going to require these huge societal changes. So either we get, you know, the LEDs, or we're going to have to figure out the right and wrong ways to wear headphones. And I would just want to know what everybody thinks about that. This is a thing we've gotten a lot of feedback about. I'd like to hear your thoughts, too. How should we think about headphones in the real world? Especially as headphones become more than just music devices, as they become something that actually augments your ability to go through your life,

• 1:10:29David Pierce?

  while also being a way to listen to music and TikTok? How do we navigate that? What is the right answer for headphones? Should we enter a world where we're all wearing headphones all the time and we just kind of figure it out? Should headphones just be outlawed forever and things that are hearing aids should look like hearing aids? Is there an interesting answer somewhere in between, both culturally and in product? I want to hear all your feedback. This has turned out to be a much bigger, more interesting thing than I expected. So please hit us up. I want to hear everything. We're going to keep talking about this in more and more ways in the coming months because I think this matters in some pretty big ways. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who was on the show. Thank you for listening. Thank you for calling the hotline. Thank you for being a part of this with us.

• 1:11:13David Pierce?

  There's lots more about everything we talked about, including this mini package of stories we did about the legacy and future of Alexa at theverge.com. I'll link to all of it in the show notes, but as always, read theverge.com. It's a big week this week. Go vote if you haven't voted yet, and if you're listening to this on Tuesday in the United States, go vote, read our election package, lots of great stories in there, read the endorsement, go vote. Best of luck to everybody out there. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other Alexa devices you would like to set off inside of my house, you can always email us at [email protected] or call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poor, and Eric Gomez. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:11:56David Pierce?

  Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about, honestly, I couldn't even guess at this point because it's an election week, and I suspect we'll be talking about that, plus some other product news, plus a bunch of Apple stuff that's shipping this week. Lots to do. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:12:21Speaker 06

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