from Hacker News

Alexa+

by fgblanch on 2/26/25, 4:50 PM with 339 comments

  • by Arthanos on 2/26/25, 8:04 PM

    >Let’s say you need to get your oven fixed—Alexa+ will be able to navigate the web, use Thumbtack to discover the relevant service provider, authenticate, arrange the repair, and come back to tell you it’s done—there’s no need to supervise or intervene.

    This is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't trust an LLM to choose between two brands of dish soap for me let alone pick a contractor, schedule a repair, and make a payment. Even if there was a demo showing this working in a sterile environment, reality is so complex that something is certain to go wrong. Even the "simple" task of summarizing news had so many catastrophic failures that Apple had to pull it from the market.

    Amazon is making bold claims about the capabilities of their voice assistant to sell their subscription service so that they can make the Alexa division profitable, but if any of their claims were real, they would be demoing rather than writing science fiction in a press release.

  • by taeric on 2/26/25, 7:39 PM

    I find it interesting that the big companies are so sure that LLMs are somehow going to make a larger market for smart speakers than they currently have. To the contrary, I expect they are going to damage the market they have for people that just want easy kitchen timers and radio like functionality.

    This feels like the VR plays some of the big companies have made. I'm willing to bet that the market for people that want to play VR games is far larger than the current market for any other VR use. To a silly degree.

    Could this change with overwhelmingly amazing technology? Maybe. But a bit of a moot point, as we don't have that technology, yet. And in the meantime we are just making the existing markets depressed.

    To that point, is it time I look into making my own kitchen timer/radio device? Was never really that tough, all told. A raspberry pi is more than powerful enough to do so. Difficult part is largely the packaging aspect of it. Upside will be that you can do what people largely want 100% local.

  • by AdmiralAsshat on 2/26/25, 7:43 PM

    > and free with Prime

    Gee I can't wait for my Amazon Prime renewal price to go up this year when Amazon decides they had to raise the price to justify the inclusion of AI.

  • by delichon on 2/26/25, 5:02 PM

    I've been spoiled by LLMs in my daily work and now want to put the same kind of prompts into search boxes. Not "air fryers" but "air fryers without bluetooth or wifi and less than 3 cooking modes, and no negative reviews about the device failing prematurely." I'm not going to let Alexa plus or minus listen into my whole life, but I would like some that of intelligence when I actually go shopping.

  • by harmmonica on 2/26/25, 5:25 PM

    If an LLM-based voice assistant/hardware combination works as well as ChatGPT-for-voice works today, I don't think it's a stretch to say that nearly everyone in the coming years will use/have one (the software of course will be portable to whatever device you're using--house, phone, car, etc. But the hardware portion I do believe will be critical because most of the time using it will be at home in a room and in that scenario sound quality will actually be key).

    That said, if nearly everyone will find utility in an assistant, obviously the biggest issue with using one of these, as this Amazon announcement illustrates, is whether you really can trust the company with such a thing when you would be having entire conversations about everything from your interests to something as sensitive as your emotional state (anyone simulated a therapy session with ChatGPT? It arguably is already a decent therapist!).

    One of two things will happen, though. People will be dumb enough to "upload" their deepest darkest secrets to megacorp x (thousands of HN users cackle in the distance as if that's not happening today) or a completely privacy-safe option will be available and will win because they're able to effectively communicate that they are in fact private. It's one thing for Google or FB to build a picture of who you are, what you think, etc. through browsing activity/purchases/etc. It's entirely something else for you to literally tell them every last thing about you so that they can hear, in your own words, how you think about "everything."

  • by system7rocks on 2/26/25, 8:04 PM

    I think this is an interesting curiosity, but I am a little worn out on every company announcing AI as some kind of major upgrade. Alexa has already been sort of a waning product, and in some ways, it was already kind of cute since you could play goofy games. But cute gets old.

    With AI, there is still this massive trust issue. How can I trust that AI is steering me in an actual helpful way? How is Alexa+ integrated with Amazon's core model of selling stuff... lots and lots of stuff?

  • by nashashmi on 2/26/25, 6:41 PM

    I remember when law officers wanted the Alexa recording at the home of a murder. Amazon did not give it up.

    I always thought that data was meaningless if it takes a person hours to go through it. Now we have AI. Which means the data is not meaningless. And the always on feature actually means something. And that means all your data at home can be at someone's fingertips ... because say they are looking for ways to make your home and government more efficient?

  • by gwbas1c on 2/26/25, 9:14 PM

    You know what I really want?

    Rosie, from the Jetsons.

    I want a physical robot to do domestic tasks. All the things that Alexia+ automates are things that don't take much time, nor are things I want to hand over to AI.

  • by wiremine on 2/26/25, 7:13 PM

    I'm not optimistic, but my recent experiences with Gemini's mobile app gives me pause on my pessimism.

    My wife and I are planning a family vacation, and we had some questions about various destinations. I opened Gemini, and we had a helpful 10-minute conversation.

    If Alexa+ can provide a similar experience, I can see us having more of those voice-based sessions.

  • by 0898 on 2/26/25, 6:32 PM

    The main use case in our house for Alexa is sending announcements between rooms. But for a few months now, it hasn’t worked properly.

    I will say: “Alexa, send an announcement”. But 50% of the time, instead of prompting me for the announcement, it will play me saying “Send an announcement” around the house.

    I wonder if anyone else has had this issue, or if it’s just me?

  • by lasermike026 on 2/26/25, 5:21 PM

    Why would I want Alexa+ if I have ChatGPT? Why isn't Alexa+ already a part of the Amazon Echo? None of this makes any sense.

  • by terminalbraid on 2/26/25, 5:57 PM

    I'm surprised this took as long as it did, but I'm also in the process of de-Alexafying my home and frankly this is pushing me further away. I quit using the grocery list functionality when they a) started putting ads in it b) made it so I could only use the phone app. I'm tired of it taking away features I found useful. I'm tired of it advertising features to me that I don't want to use, let alone hear about, and cannot make it stop.

    I've reverted to regular dumb paper lists, dumb clocks, dumb timers and I'm happier for it. I'm not giving this a chance to be another ad vector (especially if I'm paying for the privilege one way or another). I find that they claim this can store arbitrary facts about me it learns through conversation chilling and not at all a feature I want to entertain. There is no privacy policy you can offer me that will convince me otherwise.

  • by dmix on 2/26/25, 6:15 PM

    Finally, Alexa hasn't improved at all in years. I half love half hate mine.

    I use about 3 of them daily for smart lights, alarms, timers, and weather. That's about it.

  • by 827a on 2/26/25, 5:06 PM

    > Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but is free for all Prime members.

    Prime costs $140/year ($11.66/mo). Why would they even waste their time with the other subscription? To make the Prime option look more enticing?

  • by mdasen on 2/26/25, 4:58 PM

    The pricing seems odd. $20/mo for Alexa+, but it's free with a $15/mo Prime subscription?

    It makes me think that it will only be included with Prime for a short time - long enough to get a lot of Alexa users hooked on it.

  • by phillipcarter on 2/26/25, 8:45 PM

    I'll take "smart speaker that actually understands the music I want to play" first, then we can get into scheduling appointments to fix my oven.

  • by 1shooner on 2/26/25, 5:19 PM

    >Alexa+ is also proactive when it’s important — like ... telling you a gift you wanted to buy is on sale.

    I feel there is a growing divide in digital culture, with the majority being the eager consumer of surveillance capitalism, and the much smaller but growing minority that sees it as absurd to pay for invasive commercials.

    On a purely UX level, I have never seen 'shouting at a speaker' as a desirable general purpose interface.

  • by twitchard on 2/26/25, 10:44 PM

    Crazy how many voice AI related updates there were this week. Grok voice mode, Alexa+, Hume OCTAVE, Elevenlabs Scribe SST... big day for Voice AI!

  • by modeless on 2/26/25, 9:05 PM

    The video here [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCCNHWV5] promises a whole lot. I am skeptical for now but at the same time I do believe this will all be possible in the next two years.

    The pricing is silly. You can get it for $20/mo, or free with Prime, but Prime costs $15/mo?

  • by jccalhoun on 2/26/25, 6:32 PM

    I have 4 echos. This stuff looks like a lot of things I will never use.

  • by mixedCase on 2/26/25, 4:59 PM

    Finally one of the big ones drop a conversational assistant based on modern LLMs.

    I'm just hoping this is what it takes for Google to follow the trend for Android Auto and they go through with their internal integration experiment, don't care if I have to pay a fee, I just want it to understand my accent and be useful consistently.

  • by bookofjoe on 2/26/25, 7:34 PM

    The problem for both Amazon and Apple is that they've sunk SO much money into Alexa and Siri that they simply can't walk away and start over with AI. Thus, their futile attempts at combining their original creations with state-of-the-art AI and LLM. It's like putting lipstick on a pig.

  • by bronco21016 on 2/26/25, 5:57 PM

    Given how Apple Intelligence has gone so far, I'm not going to hold my breath.

  • by blackeyeblitzar on 2/26/25, 7:05 PM

    Can Prime users instead get a discounted prime without this Alexa stuff? Seems like it should be $20 cheaper per month. In other words Prime shipping should be free.

  • by hennell on 2/26/25, 5:47 PM

    I have a few Google home mini's and an Alexa. All have deteriorated since I bought them, becoming worse at both what they offer, and how well they understand or do what they still can.

    My first google mini I could ask for a recipe and it would read one out. Next step to move along, it was cool but slow. I got one with a screen which was pretty good as you could see the steps and jump ahead more. Then it 'upgraded' and the recipes were just web pages now. It doesn't read it any more, it's worse at finding them, half the time it'll try and play a music video instead.

    Alexa's the same - you've a good 20% chance at any moment of it figuring you want to listen to music about whatever you just asked. I never want them to play music, but there they go playing loud enough you have to yell to shut it up.

    Lights were great at the start. I have a long room with lights nowhere near the bed. Google turning the lights on and off was amazing. Dimming the lights even better. But after 'improvements' it never seems to know fully about lights. The same spoken word might get the lights off. Or might turn every light in the house off. Maybe it will say there are no lights. Or say that, then turn the lights off anyway. Why did it work so well years ago, but now they never know what you mean?

    They don't seem to distinguish like they should either. My mum has several Alexa's(visually impaired it's a great tool for her) but she complains they don't listen anymore as well. Used to be the one in the room you were in would answer. Now it might answer in the adjacent room, and control lights in there leaving you in the dark. Even worse with google, as your phone also listens then takes over to tell you it doesn't know what room your in so which lights do you mean?

    And even my mum has noticed the increasingly bad question responses. She used to ask Alexas questions all the time, but now she says it's either confused or wrong.

    I don't know if this is all because they cut back on the abilities to reduce the money pit these things became, or if the newer Gemini style assistants are just worse at giving practical help, even if they're more natural sounding while being useless.

    But it's annoying as hell seeing something that was a pretty good system get worse and worse over time, losing the skills to do what it did.

    Maybe Alexa+ will change that, but I'd put more money on it continuing to play random music in rooms you're not in and make up weird answers to questions rather than just do some basic but actually useful tasks.

  • by drivingmenuts on 2/26/25, 5:13 PM

    How much intelligence does it take to handle "Alexa, turn off the light" or "Alexa, play something by Taylor Swift"? Are people actually trusting Alexa to answer questions that require actual thought?

  • by 1970-01-01 on 2/26/25, 6:18 PM

    >continue on the go with your phone or in the car,

    I made a comment about having a true LLM co-pilot only a couple days ago by insisting Grok3 integrate into all Teslas. Seems like Alexa+ is beating them to the punch.

  • by wayeq on 2/26/25, 9:58 PM

    > She knows what you’ve bought, what you’ve listened to, the videos you’ve watched, the address you ship things to, and how you like to pay

    really advertising to the hackernews crowd with this line

  • by bakugo on 2/26/25, 6:44 PM

  • by JadoJodo on 2/26/25, 5:40 PM

    I have to say (as somewhat of an Amazon critic): I'm not sure that the smile below “Alexa+” works in this case; it comes across as a tad creepy for me with the AI context.

  • by yuehhangalt on 2/26/25, 9:03 PM

    I had Alexa devices throughout my home to control music and lights and set timers. Over time, the amount of advertising on anything that had a screen and the overall annoying reminders about tipping my delivery driver or leaving a review when I asked the time made me realize that I didn't want or need them anymore. I sold them all last year and just use my phone/smart watch to do what Alexa had been. For music, Sonos' voice assistant has proven to be good enough, claims to be on-device, and actually has been more responsive.

    Considering I've had frequent issues with LLMs hallucinating and giving me blatantly wrong information, it will be quite a long time before I trust them, especially through a voice assistant where I can't easily request citations that I can follow up on to validate the information.

    It's strange, but as someone who grew up during the dawn of the personal computer and built my life around technology, I'm realizing I increasingly want less of it.

  • by qwertox on 2/26/25, 5:24 PM

    > Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but all Amazon Prime members will get it for free.

    > We will prioritize Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 device owners in the early access period. If you don’t have one of those devices, and want to be among the first to experience Alexa+, you can buy one now.

    Thank you for nothing, then?

    I have to assume that this then has no text based interaction mode, or what is the reason for not launching chat.amazon.com which could be used in a browser?

    --

    Mea Culpa: I missed the part "Customers will also be able to access Alexa+ in a new mobile app (available in the Apple App Store and Google Play store) and a new browser-based experience at Alexa.com."

  • by mkayle on 2/26/25, 7:54 PM

    My main request is to add the functionality to inquire about the progress of running tasks, such as checking the time remaining on a timer.

  • by ramon156 on 2/26/25, 9:34 PM

    Hate these kind of claims where they go "Alexa is sooo good at doing X, omggg". I don't care, show me that it works.

  • by spacemannoslen on 2/26/25, 5:09 PM

    I remember reading an article about how Amazon would lose money every year on the Alexa service.

    I wonder if /how that will change now after this.

  • by gotts on 2/26/25, 6:21 PM

    If they have a decent API I might consider buying it. Unfortunately it's not yet yet released in my region.

  • by bluesounddirect on 2/27/25, 12:28 PM

    i may box all of mine up and "return" them back to mr bozos . i use them for glorified alarm clocks that can start a internet radio stream . i dont need anything else . i wonder if new alexa will still tell me how much protein is in a 42 inch flat screen tv !

  • by beardyw on 2/26/25, 5:44 PM

    I feel just as excited about this as I did the last Alexa. Why use the name of a failed product?

  • by cyberax on 2/26/25, 8:31 PM

    I can't care less about Alexa ordering me something on Amazon or booking tickets. I can do that better from my computer.

    I want it to be able to deal with home automation. It looks like even simple: "turn off the light at 9pm" is not going to work. Or setting up something like "on sunrise, open the window shades".

  • by junto on 2/26/25, 5:18 PM

    Do I need a new Amazon device or will it work with my current Echo?

  • by toddmorey on 2/26/25, 5:41 PM

    They are very hand-wavy in the privacy & security section.

  • by stacktrust on 2/26/25, 10:06 PM

    > Identify or find objects with Alexa+.. use the camera on Echo Show devices to identify objects and get help with daily tasks. For example, reorder pantry items by showing them to the new Alexa, ask Alexa to identify a type of plant and its care instructions and set reminders for when it needs to get watered, or get fashion or décor ideas. This new feature is particularly game changing for people who are blind or have low vision

    This has so much potential, but it will require a workflow for Alexa to learn about specific objects and layout (of multiple objects) within the customer's home. Apple's "live audio descriptions of video" had similar promise at launch, but hasn't evolved beyond the launch demo, https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iph32deb9296/18.... Could Alexa+ enable self-service RLHF on home video/images?

    It's a testament to the latent market opportunity that Amazon has sold 500+ million devices, despite the obstacles that greet customers trying to customize Alexa for their specific needs. With open developer interfaces, Alexa could have been the "IBM PC" of voice AI, instead of just another walled garden.

    Alexa use cases for elderly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41062989

    In theory, Home Assistant voice hardware could be integrated with local LLMs for private voice control, https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/

    > Fully open software, firmware, and hardware.. Grove port for connecting sensors and a 3.5mm headphone jack for connecting external speakers

  • by insane_dreamer on 2/26/25, 10:50 PM

    So will the next major Alexa release be Alexa++ ?

  • by ge96 on 2/26/25, 6:19 PM

    The fusion of the different devices is cool but man it feels odd to be owned by some company, integrated into all aspects of your life idk.

    My phone runs my life so maybe Google owns me technically

  • by lostmsu on 2/26/25, 7:17 PM

    How can I try it? My Prime expires in 3 days.

  • by rolph on 2/26/25, 5:06 PM

    model agnostic, meaning a model is enlisted based on specific task, rather than a shoehorn and a single model.

  • by j_timberlake on 2/26/25, 11:10 PM

    Hot take: If AI ever gets smart enough to actually do these activities well, the USA government will decide AI is a "national security risk" and not allow companies to sell access to it. Terrorists and drug cartels might use it!

    Chatbots will be fine, but anything actually useful? Banned.

  • by rdtsc on 2/26/25, 6:33 PM

    Wait till she "mishears" you: "I thought you said you wanted to purchase 10 gallons of Amazon basics hand soap. Sorry about that. The shipping is arriving today, but you can return it back at the nearest UPS location".

    I see this kind of junk in their prime video adds when we are trying to watch a movie. "While we show this add, click here to add the item to your cart".

  • by doctoboggan on 2/26/25, 5:04 PM

    I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years.

    But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.

  • by rabuse on 2/26/25, 7:48 PM

    Who actually wants this garbage?

  • by echelon on 2/26/25, 5:00 PM

    > She can also help you search, find or buy virtually any item online, and make useful suggestions based on your interests.

    And there it is. Still trying to sell refills on paper towels.

    > Alexa+ costs $19.99 per month, but is free for all Prime members.

    Unrelated business unit profit to subsidize reaches into new markets. Amazon isn't so egregious here as the other tech titans, but it is absurd to think I'll need a subscription to a ecom/grocery store to watch James Bond or Lord of the Rings. Or that I might be sold on visiting an Amazon Prime compatible primary care doctor. I don't like this.

  • by SteveJS on 2/26/25, 10:53 PM

    I really did like that kitchen timer. This seems like it would have been pretty good.

    However. My wife is super pissed at Bezos. She unplugged all our echos. She has me researching to try decide between a Roku or Apple tv to replace the fire tv.

    The amazon card went from 90% of our non-mortgage spending to 10% and dropping.

    I honestly didn’t believe it would ever happen but I think we are probably going to drop Prime soon.

    I’m still thankful for the Expanse, that show was great.