Alexa & ChatGPT: a match made in AI heaven
The death of smart speakers has been greatly exaggerated.
Hello, reader! I’m trying something new with today’s post. Instead of my typical, biweekly-ish long read, I’m trying a shorter “thought starter” to head into the weekend (based on a tweet I quickly fired off a few hours ago). Enjoy! 🙏
Late in 2022, the media was writing off smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home as a “colossal failure.” Given the dramatic Amazon losses driven by the Alexa business, it seemed like a reasonable take. Here are a few example headlines:
Amazon thought Alexa would be the next iPhone. Turns out it's a 'glorified clock radio.'
Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year
This article is more than 1 month old Alexa, how did Amazon’s voice assistant rack up a $10bn loss?
But then something happened: ChatGPT launched and everyone on the planet realized just how world-altering LLMs (large language models) and AI will be for our future.
Now, a mere two months later, the potential of AI has me realizing something pretty obvious: Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and smart speakers more broadly are going to go from “just OK for a limited set of tasks” to insanely great.
Just imagine: No longer will you only rely on your smart speaker for simple tasks like playing music setting a cooking timer. Your speaker will finally understand exactly what it is you're asking. It’ll be able to respond to you perfectly, just like a human would. It will answer complex questions, help you respond to your email, book air travel, and process detailed, multi-step commands.
A few years ago, many were predicting that “voice” would become the next great ubiquitous software platform. It didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean it won’t. Perhaps it just needed today’s AI to become the future.
What do you think? Are we headed towards a voice-first future thanks to AI? Let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.