“Alexa, I need to write a review about you.”
“Oh, a review? I’m intrigued! What’s the occasion? I’d love to hear what you think.”
“There’s no occasion, this is just my work.”
“Ah, I see. Writing a professional review, got it. I’m here to help if you need any specific information.”
“Yeah, what should I consider when reviewing you?”
“Consider my natural voice, emotional intelligence and my ability to handle complex tasks. How about my personality and humor? Those are key parts of the new me.”
The above is a recent exchange I had with Alexa+. Access to the next-generation assistant has been slowly trickling out to users since Amazon first announced availability at an event in February. But work on the smarter, more natural-sounding Alexa has been going on for years, and it still isn’t ready for a widespread release. The version currently rolling out is more like an intriguing preview of what a truly intelligent Alexa could be.
I’m having a hard time figuring out how I feel about the upgraded Alexa. On the one hand, I cannot deny it is now capable of tackling some fairly complex requests it couldn’t before. On the other, it doesn’t have good memory, can’t really see all tasks to completion and is just incompetent enough to be annoying.
I want to first caveat all of this by pointing out that when it does become broadly available, Alexa+ will be a free upgrade for Amazon Prime subscribers. Non-Prime members will have to pay $20 a month for the privilege, but they’ll still get the existing Alexa experience on their compatible devices should they choose not to upgrade. That means there will likely be no extra cost to most, and you probably won’t need to spend too much time thinking about whether you want to use it. As long as it’s not a worse experience, it is very easy to say yes to.
I’ve been tempted to get philosophical when thinking about a digital assistant that’s more fluent in human. Do I really want to think of the new Alexa as basically a flesh-and-blood assistant with emotional intelligence, personality and humor? No. If it performs poorly, I'll be let down; if it performs well and can essentially pass a mini Turing test, the ickier I'll feel at keeping something like an indentured servant in my kitchen.
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