Uh, Where Did All the New Alexa Users Go?

So, you know that new Alexa+ thing Amazon was talking about? The one with the fancy AI? Well, they started rolling it out to tons of people over six weeks ago. But, like, where are they? Seriously, finding regular folks who actually have it? It's been super tough.

This new version was supposed to be a really big deal for Amazon, especially after some bumps in the road trying to get Alexa up to speed with all the latest AI stuff, you know, like ChatGPT. Amazon even had their big boss, Andy Jassy, show up at an event in New York back in February. They showed off what the new Alexa+ could do and said people would start getting invites by late March.

But here's the thing, according to Avi Greengart, who's an analyst at Techsponential and was actually at that event, it seems nobody really has it. He said it's kind of a common thing where companies announce stuff when it's almost ready but not quite. That last little bit of getting it out there is apparently way harder than they think it's gonna be.

To try and find someone, anyone, who had the new Alexa+, we looked everywhere. News sites, YouTube, TikTok, X, BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook, even Amazon's own Twitch. We even read reviews for the Echo devices on Amazon.com. We found a couple of people on Reddit who said they used it, but they couldn't really prove it, and we couldn't figure out who they were for sure.

Amazon's spokesperson said that hundreds of thousands of people have access to Alexa+ now. They said, yeah, some are employees and their families, but most of them are just customers who asked for early access. That's more than they said on May 1st, which was about 100,000 users. But Amazon didn't say why there aren't any reviews or reactions from regular people online. They also didn't let us talk to anyone who's actually using Alexa+.

Apparently, Amazon doesn't make people sign a paper saying they won't talk about it if they get early access, which is interesting.

Now, getting AI-powered Alexa+ out there is going kinda slow. And, tbh, some sources who know what's going on say it's still kinda slow at answering stuff sometimes. Also, just like other AI things, it sometimes makes up stuff or gets things wrong. Plus, it costs a lot of money to run, these sources said.

Usually, you can use Alexa to set timers, answer simple questions, or tell you the weather, mostly through your Amazon TVs or Echo devices. Even though Apple's Siri came out first (three years before the original Alexa!), it was Alexa that really made voice assistants popular. This big update for Alexa+ is supposed to give the old service a boost and help Amazon keep up with other AI chatbots out there from places like OpenAI and Meta.

Amazon has put billions into developing Alexa since 2014, but it hasn't really made money, and that whole idea of people using it to shop with their voice? Yeah, that hasn't really happened either.

Usually, when tech companies launch something new, they get people like analysts, reviewers, social media folks, and reporters to help spread the word. Apple, for example, is really good at this. They let people at events try out their new iPhones or laptops for a little bit, and then send them out to reviewers for more detailed looks shortly after the announcement. Amazon did something similar back in October with their new color Kindle; reviewers got to test it at an event before it went on sale just two weeks later.

Remember back in September 2023? Amazon showed off an earlier version of the AI Alexa and said customers would get an 'early preview' in a few weeks. That never happened, though.

The idea for Alexa+ is that it can handle lots of requests one after another, and even act as a kind of 'agent' for you, doing things without you having to tell it exactly what to do each time. That's different from how it works now, where it usually just does one thing at a time.

During Amazon's earnings call a couple of weeks ago, the CEO, Andy Jassy, said over 100,000 people were using the new voice service and that people were 'really liking Alexa+ thus far.'

But Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks that waiting so long between showing off the product and actually letting people get it means Amazon isn't building up much excitement for Alexa+. He said they should just lean on people who make curated YouTube or TikTok videos and tell them what to talk about. Instead, he thinks this makes it look like maybe they're a little worried about something.

Avi Greengart from Techsponential thought the February event for Alexa was maybe a sign that something was up because they didn't let anyone actually try the service. Instead, they shuffled people into little rooms where managers just did planned talks and answered only a few questions. We were there too, and yeah, we couldn't try it either.

Think back to when Amazon launched the Fire Phone in 2014. People could actually hold the phone and play with it. And when the first Echo device with Alexa came out weeks after they announced it in November 2014, people started sharing what they thought about it publicly pretty quickly, like in December.

Supposedly, the upgraded Alexa is designed to help you with things like asking for suggestions for vacation clothes or getting news summary. The demos showed it could handle more complicated stuff, like ordering food while remembering your diet preferences.

To try and show how useful Alexa+ is, Amazon actually pointed to a story on TechRadar from April that mentioned an anonymous post on Reddit from someone who claimed to have tried the service. That Reddit post, btw, has since been deleted. So, yeah, still a bit of a mystery, huh?