Amazon to relaunch Alexa as an AI agent: Report

Amazon is reportedly planning to revamp their digital voice assistant Alexa and relaunch it as an AI agent, according to a report by Financial Times. The company has been trying to transform Alexa into a generative AI tool for the past two years, it will still take some time before the new Alexa is out. 

Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s head of artificial general intelligence (AGI) told the outlet that the revamp was still facing technical challenges like hallucinations and latency. 

The goal is to turn the digital assistant into an AI agent personalised for users to perform tasks like turning the lights on and off according to sleep cycle.

Alexa has become known as a missed opportunity for Amazon after a former AI scientist at the unit said that the company had lost out on becoming a market leader in conversational AI despite having a huge amount of resources financially.

Meanwhile, it was reported today that OpenAI will be launching an AI assistant to compete with the likes of Alexa and Siri.