November 6th marks 10 years to the day since Amazon surprise-launched a new, cylindrical device called the Echo. It introduced the world to smart speakers, and to the idea that you might be able to get stuff done just by shouting aloud in your living room. But a decade in, what has Alexa really accomplished? The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to talk through the history of Alexa, Amazon's struggles to improve and extend its voice assistant, and the promise of a language model overhaul that might in theory make Alexa far more useful. There's a chance Alexa's second decade might be even more interesting than the first.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Verge cast, the flagship podcast
00:00:02of Far Field Microphones.
00:00:04I'm your friend David Pierce,
00:00:05and I am sitting here updating
00:00:06maybe the single most important list in my life.
00:00:10I'm a person who thinks in lists,
00:00:11if you haven't figured that out
00:00:13from listening to this show in recent years.
00:00:15I have a list of all of the stuff that I have to do.
00:00:18I have lists for all of my frequent flyer accounts.
00:00:21Everything is bullet points, everything is lists.
00:00:23It's just how my brain works.
00:00:25But the list that is the most important to me
00:00:28is one I've been keeping for the last several years,
00:00:30and it's called how to be a grownup.
00:00:33So I'm sure I've complained about this on the show before,
00:00:35but they never tell you when you're a kid
00:00:37that being an adult is just like a series
00:00:39of small maintenance tasks.
00:00:41And none of them are very hard,
00:00:43but they're impossible to remember to do.
00:00:44And because you don't do them, things break horribly.
00:00:48So over the years, as I've discovered each of these tasks,
00:00:51I've added it to the list and I've added reminders
00:00:54so that now at intervals, every three months, let's say,
00:00:57I get one that's like,
00:00:58hey, change the air filter in the furnace
00:01:00so that the air isn't disgusting in your house.
00:01:03And all of these tasks are like quick and simple.
00:01:06It's just remembering to do them,
00:01:08or even that they're a thing you're supposed to do
00:01:10is the problem.
00:01:11The most recent one, by the way,
00:01:12is remember to change the air filter on the dehumidifier
00:01:18that I put in the laundry room
00:01:19because the laundry room stinks because of all the moisture.
00:01:22Like there are like eight grownup tasks
00:01:25that backed all the way into change the air filter.
00:01:28So now every couple of months,
00:01:30I have a task that is going to remind me
00:01:32to change the air filter,
00:01:33or at least just like hose it down
00:01:36so that the laundry room doesn't stink.
00:01:38This is being an adult.
00:01:39It's not that much fun, but here we are.
00:01:41Anyway, we are not here to talk about lists
00:01:44or dehumidifiers.
00:01:45We are here to talk about Alexa.
00:01:47So this week, Wednesday specifically,
00:01:49is the 10 year anniversary of the very first Amazon Echo.
00:01:53You might remember the one that kind of looked
00:01:55like a can of tennis balls or like a Pringles can.
00:01:58It had the blue ring.
00:01:59It had the far field microphone.
00:02:00In a surprising way, it was like a fully formed vision
00:02:04for a new way of computing.
00:02:06And 10 years later, in a strange way,
00:02:09I think it has actually been both more and less
00:02:12transformative than we might've expected.
00:02:15And so we're going to spend the whole hour
00:02:16with Gentooey talking through all of that.
00:02:19How far have we gotten?
00:02:20Where is left to go?
00:02:22Is this actually the right path
00:02:24for the future of computing?
00:02:25Alexa got a lot of people excited.
00:02:27Google with Google Assistant has made huge moves
00:02:30towards this same kind of thing.
00:02:32Siri was around before Alexa,
00:02:35but has changed a lot because of Alexa, I think.
00:02:37And now with AI, we have this giant push
00:02:40towards something very similar.
00:02:43And so the question as always is, is this what we want?
00:02:46Is this the right answer?
00:02:48And what can we learn from the first 10 years of Alexa
00:02:51about what it'll take to get there?
00:02:53We're going to get to all of that,
00:02:54but I should just warn you before we start,
00:02:56turn off your Alexa devices.
00:02:58I'm sure I've set them off several times already,
00:03:00and for that, I'm very sorry,
00:03:01but we are going to say that word
00:03:04so, so, so many times in the next hour.
00:03:07Go on a walk, put on headphones.
00:03:10I don't know, like put pillows around you
00:03:13so that you're in just a little fort
00:03:14where it's you and the Verge cast.
00:03:15Do what you got to do, but turn the speakers off
00:03:18because otherwise it's going to get rough out there.
00:03:20I have also set mine off two times
00:03:22since I've been sitting here.
00:03:25We're going to get through it together, friends.
00:03:26All that is coming up in just a second,
00:03:28but first, literally, I have to go turn off
00:03:3030 or 40 devices or else this is going to get
00:03:32really, really, really messy.
00:03:34This is the Verge cast.
00:03:37Welcome back.
00:03:38All right, let's just get into Alexa stuff,
00:03:40but before we do, let me just really quickly set the scene.
00:03:43So it's November 6th of 2014, 10 years ago this Wednesday.
00:03:49Theverge.com, it's a website.
00:03:51We're like three years old, and all of a sudden,
00:03:55Amazon just drops this thing on its website.
00:03:59It was in the morning of that day, and it just appeared.
00:04:03Let me just read you the headline from our story.
00:04:05This is at 11.56 a.m. on November 6th, 2014.
00:04:09It's by Chris Welch, and I love this headline very much.
00:04:12It says, Amazon just surprised everyone
00:04:14with a crazy speaker that talks to you.
00:04:17Kind of tells you everything you need to know, right?
00:04:19The thing was called Echo.
00:04:21It was priced at $199.
00:04:23You could buy one for $99 if you were a Prime member,
00:04:27and if you got an invite.
00:04:29It was a very odd thing.
00:04:31We'd never really seen anything like it before,
00:04:33and going back and reading over those early days,
00:04:36it's very funny to see the reaction to these things,
00:04:40that it was like, why does this exist?
00:04:42What is it going to be for?
00:04:43Why do I have this?
00:04:46The big idea from Amazon was not voice assistance
00:04:49in general, but that it could be
00:04:52a different finite physical thing,
00:04:56that it could be a piece of furniture in your house,
00:04:58and that that might change how you use it.
00:05:02I think that kind of worked.
00:05:03Amazon was right about a lot of things,
00:05:05but it was also wrong about a lot of things,
00:05:07and I think if you rewind 10 years,
00:05:10a lot has changed, and also nothing has changed.
00:05:14Anyway, we have lots to cover,
00:05:16and there's also maybe, maybe some huge Alexa news
00:05:19coming for us that might change the next decade
00:05:22for all of this, too.
00:05:24Lots to get to.
00:05:25We're doing this for the whole show.
00:05:27Let's just get into it.
00:05:28Gentooie, hello.
00:05:29Hi, David.
00:05:30How are you doing?
00:05:31I'm good.
00:05:33I have a sick child, so I haven't left my house
00:05:35in several days, or slept in several days,
00:05:38so I'm not 100% sure where I am or what's going on,
00:05:41but otherwise, we're good.
00:05:43Oh, I like delirious David.
00:05:46It could be really fun.
00:05:48This might be the longest Verge cast in history.
00:05:50It's very possible.
00:05:51I take no responsibility for anything I say
00:05:54in the course of this segment.
00:05:56I should just say that at the beginning
00:05:57of every Verge cast, actually.
00:05:58That would be the legal disclaimer
00:06:00that this is all based on fictional people
00:06:03and characters, not real.
00:06:05Okay, so we're here to talk about Alexa,
00:06:08because I guess Alexa is 10.
00:06:10I was trying to think back to this,
00:06:11and I'm like, what was the beginning of Alexa?
00:06:14Because if I remember correctly, 10 years ago,
00:06:18Alexa started in a deeply strange way.
00:06:21Yes, it really was a very interesting launch.
00:06:25I think very much influenced by the spectacular failure
00:06:29of the Fire Phone a few months prior.
00:06:32Was that really only a few months before?
00:06:33It happened just prior, and I think,
00:06:37I actually wasn't deeply into tech journalism at the time,
00:06:40but I remember some of this.
00:06:42I mean, you reviewed the original Echo,
00:06:44so you were right in the midst of all of this.
00:06:46But looking back, doing some research
00:06:49over the last few weeks, basically,
00:06:51it sounded like Amazon had this really quite
00:06:55impressive new technology they were looking to debut,
00:06:57but they were so burned by how badly
00:06:59the Fire Phone went down that they sort of
00:07:02stealth-launched their new voice assistant, Alexa,
00:07:06which came in the new Echo smart speaker.
00:07:09And this was the first consumer smart speaker
00:07:12that anyone had seen.
00:07:14It just dropped with, I think,
00:07:15just a press release and a video.
00:07:18And there was a lot of reporting of like,
00:07:20whoa, where did this come from?
00:07:21This was a sort of stealth launch.
00:07:24And it was announced as their,
00:07:26this was a smart speaker that you could talk to,
00:07:29control with your voice.
00:07:32It had sort of a few key experiences at the start,
00:07:35which was playing music,
00:07:37answering questions from Wikipedia,
00:07:40and it was a really exciting idea.
00:07:43And the tech press was very into it.
00:07:46Lots of, oh my goodness, what's Amazon done here?
00:07:49And where is this gonna go?
00:07:51And there was a lot of excitement,
00:07:53but you couldn't actually get one.
00:07:54And I think they didn't even send out review units.
00:07:57This was how much they were learned
00:08:00from their previous mistakes.
00:08:01And I think, correct me if I'm wrong,
00:08:03the Verge actually went out and bought one
00:08:05in order to get to review it.
00:08:07And this was, and you had to get on a wait list,
00:08:10which is something that Amazon's done subsequently
00:08:12with their sort of day one edition products
00:08:14that don't necessarily have a very clear use case yet.
00:08:19And they're kind of putting it out there
00:08:21to sort of explore where the community might take it.
00:08:25And that was very much what Echo and Alexa launched as,
00:08:29as a sort of experiment.
00:08:32Although they revealed later
00:08:34that they had been spending years
00:08:35working on this technology,
00:08:36in particular, the far field microphones,
00:08:39which gave you this really cool new ability
00:08:42to be able to talk to a voice assistant
00:08:45from anywhere in the room
00:08:46and not be tied to a computer or a phone.
00:08:48And privately, the ambition that they revealed later
00:08:52was that this would be akin to Star Trek's computer,
00:08:56an all-knowing ever-present computer
00:09:00that can know what you want, do anything you ask it to,
00:09:04and you can converse with in natural language
00:09:07and do anything, control your lights,
00:09:11destroy your enemies, put up your shields.
00:09:15But you know, you get the idea.
00:09:17Small ambitions, really.
00:09:18Super, super chill idea from Amazon at the time.
00:09:22So really was exciting technology.
00:09:25So yeah, it came out in 2014,
00:09:27November 6th was when they announced it.
00:09:30I think you could start to buy it within a few months
00:09:34I believe the first review unit you reviewed
00:09:37was January time.
00:09:39It wasn't until spring of 2015
00:09:42that regular people could buy it.
00:09:44And then it finally went on general sale.
00:09:48You didn't have to sign up in,
00:09:50I think it was July of 2015.
00:09:52And I got mine under the Christmas tree.
00:09:56I put it on my Christmas list,
00:09:58my husband got it for me,
00:09:59and he presented it to me Christmas morning.
00:10:01And he said, I have no idea what this is,
00:10:05why you want it, but it was on your list.
00:10:07You got the original tennis ball can?
00:10:09The original tennis ball, yeah.
00:10:12I still have mine around here somewhere.
00:10:14I do too.
00:10:14And I assume it still works.
00:10:16Mine does, mine's in my husband's garage
00:10:18and he uses it for music and it works brilliantly.
00:10:21And actually, you know, at the same time for Christmas,
00:10:25I got him something off his list
00:10:26that I had no idea what it was either.
00:10:28It's something called a Craig pocket hole jig.
00:10:32I don't know if that, do you have any idea what that is?
00:10:34No, that sounds like something
00:10:35you can't legally say on a podcast.
00:10:37Like we're gonna get an explicit tag for that, I don't know.
00:10:40So, you know, this is a small peek
00:10:42into the Tui household there,
00:10:43but yes, it was quite funny.
00:10:44These two very different gadgets.
00:10:47What a pocket hole jig does, I found out,
00:10:50is helps make holes in wood so you can build furniture.
00:10:53And in fact, he built the piece of furniture
00:10:55I'm podcasting from right now with that.
00:10:57So that's a nice full circle.
00:10:59Big Christmas in the Tui household in 2015.
00:11:02So what's wild about that is,
00:11:04A, you've just brought up a bunch of really awful memories
00:11:07of trying to wrangle an Echo to review.
00:11:10So thank you for that.
00:11:11I want to hear that story.
00:11:13So I think that the two hardest times
00:11:16I've ever worked for a review unit of something
00:11:19were the original Snap Spectacles,
00:11:22which I drove two and a half hours
00:11:26to a vending machine in Big Sur
00:11:29and got there right after they sold out the last one.
00:11:32So I bought them from a stranger for $600.
00:11:35That was how I got Snap Spectacles the first time.
00:11:37I literally scalped Snap Spectacles.
00:11:40And then the amount of time that I spent
00:11:44trying to convince someone at Amazon to send me an Echo.
00:11:48I mean, months of being like,
00:11:50I don't know how to be clear about this.
00:11:53We would like to review this.
00:11:54Can I have one, please, to review?
00:11:56And they were just like, ah, I don't know.
00:11:59And so we just bought one and reviewed it.
00:12:01And I had forgotten the context
00:12:05they were launching this thing into
00:12:06because it is really funny to look back,
00:12:09especially with how important Alexa really quickly became.
00:12:14Like, I think it's very telling that it went
00:12:15from a secret launch to under your Christmas tree
00:12:18in 12 months.
00:12:20Once it happened, it happened really fast.
00:12:22It did, yeah.
00:12:23The way that it happened,
00:12:25I could never tell if Amazon just wasn't sure
00:12:27if it was anything or was desperately afraid
00:12:30it was Fire Phone 2.0.
00:12:32And I think you're probably right
00:12:33that they were afraid it was Fire Phone 2.0.
00:12:35Because like you said, it has also come out since then
00:12:38that this is a thing they've been working on forever.
00:12:40Jeff Bezos was very behind it and very excited about it
00:12:43and had big ideas about it.
00:12:44They were just terrified it wasn't gonna go well, I guess.
00:12:48And this was before Amazon was just in full-on
00:12:50like YOLO hardware mode.
00:12:52We're just gonna try stuff and who cares if it goes well?
00:12:53Like, it was a big bet that they kind of didn't want you
00:12:56to think was a big bet.
00:12:57Yes, yes.
00:12:58I mean, it was almost sort of like a test gadget.
00:13:02Like, oh, maybe even a developer gadget
00:13:05because that's what they pushed really hard
00:13:07was developers developing skills for Alexa
00:13:11to give it more capabilities.
00:13:12And that's something they've done,
00:13:14they've followed through on in the 10 years
00:13:16we've had the Echo devices.
00:13:19It's not a locked down proprietary device
00:13:23that is trying to lock you into.
00:13:26So all of my devices in my office
00:13:29are not designed to respond,
00:13:31but unfortunately the device is in my living room.
00:13:34Give me one second.
00:13:35Yeah, you're good.
00:13:37Alexa, turn on do not disturb.
00:13:39Sorry about that.
00:13:40I think I've got them all.
00:13:41So it wasn't a locked down proprietary device
00:13:45designed to sort of keep you in Amazon's ecosystem,
00:13:48like an iPhone was at the time.
00:13:50It really was a sort of, let's see what this can do.
00:13:53And they had software development kits,
00:13:56they even had the Farfield microphone kit.
00:14:00They allowed other manufacturers
00:14:03to put the technology into their devices.
00:14:06It really was sort of like,
00:14:07let's see what we can do with this new technology,
00:14:10which was exciting.
00:14:11It was very exciting time, I think.
00:14:13And it worked really well.
00:14:15I went back and read my review from January of 2015.
00:14:18And on the one hand,
00:14:20I had a bunch of issues using the thing,
00:14:22but on the other hand,
00:14:23I still have all those same issues 10 years later,
00:14:25which we'll get to.
00:14:26But I think the extent to which Amazon
00:14:30made sort of a small number of promises
00:14:33about what this thing was gonna be really good at,
00:14:35and was basically 100% correct,
00:14:39is really kind of incredible.
00:14:40They're like, you're gonna use this thing for music,
00:14:41you're gonna use it for basic informational lookups,
00:14:44you're gonna use it to set timers,
00:14:45you're gonna use it to convert grams to ounces.
00:14:48And like, check, check, and check.
00:14:50They really understood what the thing was for
00:14:54from the very beginning in a way
00:14:56that I had forgotten how correct they really were.
00:15:00They were, I agree.
00:15:02And it did have, in those early days,
00:15:05it was a big success.
00:15:06I think within the first two years,
00:15:08they'd sold 5 million devices as the reports had seen,
00:15:10which, I mean, it's not iPhone,
00:15:13but it's still, it's impressive
00:15:15for a brand new piece of technology.
00:15:17Yeah, I mean, it's easy to forget now,
00:15:19but like, smart speaker was not a thing that existed.
00:15:23Nobody even knew why you would want this in your house
00:15:26or what it would do.
00:15:27And I don't know if you remember the moment,
00:15:31but I do, of like, walking in and the moment
00:15:34where you're just like, play whatever song,
00:15:37play Beyonce, play Taylor Swift, and it just does.
00:15:40And all of a sudden you're like,
00:15:41I want everything to work like that.
00:15:44And like, spoiler alert, it doesn't.
00:15:46But there were, even at the very beginning,
00:15:47there were just enough of those moments
00:15:49that it was like, as soon as you were in a room
00:15:51with an echo, you kind of got it.
00:15:53And I feel like it was,
00:15:54there was like a really cool virality to that thing
00:15:57at the very beginning that was very powerful.
00:15:59Yeah, and for me, as someone who was really
00:16:01just getting into sort of tech journalism,
00:16:04but had always been a tech hobbyist,
00:16:06it was a great, it was a real revelation
00:16:08to bring this type of technology into my home,
00:16:11as opposed to being in my hand or on my lap
00:16:13or on my desktop, especially for my family.
00:16:16I mean, my kids were very young at this age.
00:16:19I mean, I think my son was three when Alexa,
00:16:22or three or four, and my daughter was maybe two.
00:16:25And we were, it was great to be able to just call out
00:16:29and play Beyonce and have a dance party
00:16:33and tell stories and jokes.
00:16:36It really, it helped bring technology
00:16:39into a much more usable space in our homes.
00:16:43And even at that age, in that time,
00:16:46I was feeling that sort of parent guilt
00:16:49of being on devices, but there's so much still
00:16:52that's great about technology for being a parent,
00:16:57playing music and reading audio books,
00:17:00things that I wanted to do with my kids,
00:17:02but I didn't want to have to pull out my phone to do it.
00:17:04So it really opened that sort of accessibility
00:17:07to technology in the home.
00:17:09And that's, and I felt like there was so much potential
00:17:12and so much that was exciting at the time,
00:17:15but it also felt like we never really went that far beyond.
00:17:19And we did get a lot of promises from,
00:17:24not maybe not promises, might be too strong a word,
00:17:26but a lot of very strong indications from Amazon
00:17:29and Jeff Bezos and Dave Limp,
00:17:32the devices and services head at the time,
00:17:34that this was going to be so much more.
00:17:38This was going to be the Star Trek computer,
00:17:42or that was what they were working towards.
00:17:44And it has been really interesting to kind of see
00:17:48that they have not got there.
00:17:50And that we do use Alexa today very much.
00:17:54And when I was sort of going back through the research here,
00:17:57I looked at my list of what I asked my device to do today
00:18:02versus what I did five years ago or seven years ago.
00:18:06And it really hasn't changed that much.
00:18:08And that sort of key difference feels like a big failure.
00:18:13And I'll tell you the reason why
00:18:15is because it's just not that reliable.
00:18:17It's the long and the short of it.
00:18:19And this is something I've seen,
00:18:22I'm in many user groups, Facebook groups,
00:18:25discords, Reddit forums,
00:18:27where people who use Echo and Alexa complain or praise
00:18:32or discuss the device and the assistant.
00:18:36And it just seems like there's a universal consensus
00:18:38that it kind of hits a plateau.
00:18:41And it can still mostly do those basic things,
00:18:45but there really hasn't been that next exciting use case,
00:18:50that next exciting development for the technology.
00:18:54There's some really interesting use cases,
00:18:57especially around accessibility and eldercare,
00:19:00where they're valuable use cases,
00:19:02people who have accessibility challenges,
00:19:07being able to open your shades
00:19:09or turn your lights on and off.
00:19:13I've written a number of pieces about using Amazon devices
00:19:16to look after elderly parents.
00:19:18There's so many key use cases,
00:19:20but they are solving specific problems.
00:19:24That ultimate idea of this ambient voice assistant
00:19:29that can manage your home,
00:19:32that can be like computer in Star Trek
00:19:36and be this omniscient, omnipresent,
00:19:39artificial intelligence hasn't arrived.
00:19:42Maybe a lot of people don't want it, but I do.
00:19:45And I was excited to see that come.
00:19:47And I feel like we just almost feel like further away
00:19:50from that than we were.
00:19:53A lot of problems I encounter when using Alexa in my home
00:19:56is it not doing what I expect it to do.
00:19:59If I've set up a sort of a more complicated routine,
00:20:03that I've tried to get it to do things like
00:20:05lock my back door, adjust my thermostat,
00:20:07turn the lights off, dim them in this room,
00:20:10turn the TV on, multiple different things at once,
00:20:14which is one of the sort of core use cases now
00:20:17of the smart home side of Alexa.
00:20:20Nine times out of 10, something doesn't work
00:20:22or it doesn't hear me correctly
00:20:23and it does something differently
00:20:26from what I've asked it to do.
00:20:27And so that happens to me so often
00:20:29that I have basically got to the point now
00:20:31where all I use it for is to turn lights on and off.
00:20:34Other than those core use cases
00:20:36of playing music and setting timers,
00:20:38which I think everyone can agree Alexa's great at.
00:20:41It's very good at it.
00:20:42Well, and I think that's kind of the key open question
00:20:47for me with a lot of this stuff
00:20:48is who and what is to blame for that fact?
00:20:52Because I actually think
00:20:53there are a bunch of possibilities, right?
00:20:55There's one world in which you say,
00:20:57okay, Amazon just didn't do it right.
00:21:01Like you could, as a sort of failure of technology,
00:21:04the far field microphone doesn't work,
00:21:06the natural language processing doesn't work, whatever.
00:21:08Cards on the table, I actually don't think it's that one,
00:21:10but I'd be curious to know if you do.
00:21:12There's a version of it that says
00:21:14it's kind of an ecosystem problem
00:21:16that actually what happened is
00:21:18there's just not enough stuff
00:21:19that it's even theoretically able to do
00:21:21that the problem with building a Star Trek computer
00:21:25is the Star Trek computer can do an awful lot of stuff
00:21:28and you have to build all that stuff and they never did.
00:21:31And then there's a third thing that basically says
00:21:34maybe this just isn't the right interface
00:21:37to do all of that stuff.
00:21:39And I think there might even be other possibilities,
00:21:42but I keep coming back to,
00:21:43I agree that we didn't get the Star Trek computer, right?
00:21:47I think everyone agrees
00:21:47we didn't get the Star Trek computer.
00:21:49But why didn't we?
00:21:51The longer we go,
00:21:52the more complicated that question becomes to me.
00:21:56And I know you thought a lot about this
00:21:58and researched a lot about it.
00:21:59Like, do you have a thing over the decade of Alexa
00:22:02you can pinpoint to be like,
00:22:03this is where we kind of lost the thread?
00:22:06Yeah, I think capitalism.
00:22:08That's fair.
00:22:11I think Alexa and Echo started out
00:22:14as a very ambitious, exciting new technology.
00:22:18And then Amazon was like,
00:22:20oh wow, we've sold 5 million of these in two years.
00:22:24Let's make hundreds more of all shapes and sizes.
00:22:28Let's put it in a ring.
00:22:30Let's put it in earbuds.
00:22:31Let's put it in cars.
00:22:32Let's make small ones, fat ones, short ones,
00:22:35tall ones, ones with screens.
00:22:38And I think the company focused far too much time
00:22:43developing new, killing more Echo devices
00:22:49when they didn't work,
00:22:51trying to expand this technology
00:22:54into every corner of our lives,
00:22:57encouraging other companies
00:22:58to make Alexa-powered speakers and devices,
00:23:01putting it in microwaves and clocks,
00:23:04and a lot of energy on that.
00:23:07Not enough energy on actually developing
00:23:10the core technology.
00:23:11And I'm not an engineer.
00:23:13And as you say,
00:23:14I think there has been a challenge
00:23:16that whether the technology is actually at the point
00:23:18where we could have had a better Alexa
00:23:20sooner than today or a few years time.
00:23:23But that doesn't mean it couldn't have got better
00:23:27incrementally.
00:23:28And there have been,
00:23:29there's many more capabilities of the voice assistant today
00:23:35than there was when it started.
00:23:37But the interface, which you alluded to,
00:23:41is the problem there.
00:23:42There are so many things it can do.
00:23:44Maybe not very many things you want it to do,
00:23:47but there are many, many things it can do.
00:23:51Fart jokes is the obvious one.
00:23:53Lots of great comedic and entertainment things,
00:23:59not as so many useful things.
00:24:02Like when you think of an assistant,
00:24:04I want an assistant to order me a pizza,
00:24:07or I want an assistant to plan my day for me.
00:24:10Those types of things never got better.
00:24:12You could connect your Google account,
00:24:14your Google calendar to it,
00:24:15or you could set up your photos through Amazon Photos,
00:24:19but there just weren't very many core good use cases
00:24:24that meant I need to use this device every day.
00:24:27It's been very much, it's fun to use this device,
00:24:31but there was no kind of breakthrough,
00:24:34this is why I have to have this device in my home,
00:24:36other than some of those more niche use cases
00:24:39we discussed earlier.
00:24:40And I feel like, I mean, Amazon's a hardware company,
00:24:43although it started out as a website,
00:24:45it's really, it has become a hardware company.
00:24:49Every, I mean, there's a, you know,
00:24:51in verge law and tech journalism law,
00:24:54when you go to an Amazon event,
00:24:56one of their fall hardware events,
00:24:57you are prepared to write up 75 new gadgets in 30 minutes.
00:25:02What was it?
00:25:03Was it 2018, the year that it was just 700,000
00:25:06new Alexa gadgets all at once?
00:25:08That was the year of the clock and the microwave.
00:25:10Right, everything.
00:25:11Yeah, anything that exists in your house,
00:25:13now it has Alexa.
00:25:13Now it has it, yes.
00:25:14Do you want that?
00:25:15Doesn't matter, you have it now.
00:25:17That was the pitch.
00:25:18But I could, I mean, I can see the value there,
00:25:21like connect all the things,
00:25:23and then Alexa can do everything you want it to do.
00:25:25But it was the getting Alexa to do everything
00:25:27you want it to do part that they never made better.
00:25:31You had to use the Alexa app,
00:25:33which is one of, is probably the single worst piece
00:25:36of smart home software I have ever used.
00:25:39I agree with that.
00:25:40It has incrementally got better,
00:25:41but it is still really difficult.
00:25:44I was just about to say,
00:25:45it's night and day better than it was even a few years ago,
00:25:48and it's still pretty bad.
00:25:49Like, it's rough.
00:25:53And they've tried to address that.
00:25:55You know, they came out with the new Echo Hub,
00:25:57so you have an interface that you can use.
00:25:59But again, it was the voice interface
00:26:02is what needed to get better.
00:26:04The voice interface needed to be,
00:26:06we need to be able to talk to our voice assistant
00:26:09in the way you can talk to, well, not you can,
00:26:12but Picard could talk to Star Trek's computer.
00:26:14Just say what you're thinking, say what you want to happen,
00:26:17and it do it for you.
00:26:18It understand and be able to do it for you.
00:26:21And we've never got anywhere close.
00:26:23Alexa's never understood better what you want
00:26:27than she did on day one.
00:26:28That never got better.
00:26:30Which I think is, I think that's the perfect way to put it,
00:26:32because one of the things I always enjoy about using Alexa
00:26:35just from a sort of like,
00:26:37perverse doing technology science work,
00:26:41is you go in and you look at something that went wrong,
00:26:44and just, the question is always like,
00:26:46did it misunderstand me?
00:26:48And actually, it very rarely does, at least in my case.
00:26:51I go in and like, I can say even very complicated,
00:26:55long, you know, multi-word, long sentence things.
00:26:59It's transcription is very good.
00:27:01And it's natural language processing is very good.
00:27:04And so it's like, it knows what I want, right?
00:27:07Like that is not the challenge.
00:27:08And you would think that yelling at a speaker
00:27:11from across the room would be a hard problem.
00:27:14And it is, but actually, again,
00:27:15from pretty close to the very beginning,
00:27:18Amazon more or less solved that problem.
00:27:21There's somewhere after that first step of like,
00:27:23I have declared my intention to my device,
00:27:26and my device has registered that intention correctly,
00:27:30and then it falls apart.
00:27:32That part, like you're saying, has never gotten,
00:27:34I would say even meaningfully better,
00:27:37much less very good.
00:27:38No, I agree.
00:27:39And that's where the Star Trek computer idea came in,
00:27:43you know, that this device
00:27:45could sort of manage your home for you.
00:27:47I mean, Alexa leaned hard into the smart home
00:27:50as soon as they realized that this was, you know,
00:27:52a great use case for voice control,
00:27:55even though it wasn't part of the initial plan.
00:27:57But to begin with, it was incredibly clunky.
00:28:02And, you know, I've spent the last eight years
00:28:05trying to use Alexa to run my smart home smoothly.
00:28:09And my sort of touch point throughout this time
00:28:12has been like a good morning routine.
00:28:14Like, this is what you always hear about
00:28:15when you talk about voice control and smart home.
00:28:19It's like, you can set up this good morning routine,
00:28:21good night routine, I'm leaving routine,
00:28:23and your whole home will just work magically.
00:28:25And I, from the days of Wink, remember Wink?
00:28:28Oh, yeah.
00:28:29That was one of the first-
00:28:30I try not to remember Wink, but every once in a while.
00:28:34That was one of the first smart home hubs
00:28:36that worked with Alexa.
00:28:38And you used to have to say,
00:28:39trigger my good morning routine.
00:28:41And my husband still says trigger
00:28:44to every time he asks Alexa to do something.
00:28:47Oh my goodness, I'm sorry.
00:28:50This is good.
00:28:51We're leaving all of these in.
00:28:51This is the point, people.
00:28:53This is the point. There are so many in my house.
00:28:56Alexa, do not disturb.
00:28:59See, this, it never gets right.
00:29:02But yes, so, and over the years, I have tried to,
00:29:05you know, it's sort of, as had been my touch point,
00:29:07like, whether we have reached a sort of magical moment
00:29:11where the smart home just works.
00:29:13And, you know, this kind of goes back,
00:29:15you know, circles back to Star Trek with, you know,
00:29:18I think the infamous line,
00:29:21and I can deliver it in an English accent,
00:29:23and I will do my best.
00:29:25Computer, tea, Earl Grey, hot.
00:29:29Ooh, that was good.
00:29:32I don't do a good Picard, sorry.
00:29:34I have to get my Shakespeare on.
00:29:35It was solid.
00:29:36I approve of that.
00:29:37But yes, you know, so, and for me,
00:29:39it was coffee, black, strong.
00:29:42And I wanted to get out of my bed.
00:29:45I wanted the lights to turn on.
00:29:47I wanted BBC Radio 2 to start playing.
00:29:50I wanted a coffee to start brewing.
00:29:53Maybe, you know, my shower to start running,
00:29:55thermostat to adjust, and then say 20 minutes later,
00:29:59the kids' lights in their room go on,
00:30:01their alarm goes off, you know,
00:30:03things that I would have to go and do manually myself,
00:30:06but having a smart home assistant do all of this for me,
00:30:10save me time in the morning, make me less stressed,
00:30:12make everyone happy.
00:30:14And so the first problem I came across was a personal one,
00:30:19but one that really kind of goes to another key area
00:30:23where the smart home in general and Alexa hasn't succeeded,
00:30:26which is context.
00:30:27So my husband has been, for most of his career,
00:30:30a shift worker.
00:30:31So he works 24-hour shifts,
00:30:33and then he would come home and sleep for 12 hours.
00:30:36So for me, having a motion sensor or using voice
00:30:39to start my morning routine was not gonna work
00:30:43because I would wake him up.
00:30:44And also, I only wanted the bedroom lights to turn on
00:30:46when he wasn't there, not when he was there.
00:30:49So, you know, there was nothing that Alexa could do
00:30:51to differentiate, didn't have the context
00:30:54of what was happening in the room.
00:30:56Then the other issue was trying to use a motion sensor
00:30:59to trigger a routine.
00:31:01It's something you've only really been able to do
00:31:02in the last couple of years.
00:31:04Motion sensing support for Alexa
00:31:07was really spotty for years.
00:31:09It worked through ZigBee initially,
00:31:11but nine times out of 10, a ZigBee motion sensor
00:31:14you connected to Echo would either not stay connected
00:31:17or wouldn't work.
00:31:19And again, maybe not Amazon's problem,
00:31:22but when you're connecting to different ecosystems,
00:31:24you need your smart assistant
00:31:26to be able to troubleshoot these things for you
00:31:28so that you don't have to spend 30 hours a week
00:31:31troubleshooting your smart home
00:31:33to get these things to work.
00:31:34And then the fresh brewed coffee.
00:31:38This is a capability that we should have had years ago.
00:31:42You can rig up a smart plug
00:31:45if you have the right type of coffee machine
00:31:48that has a physical on-off switch,
00:31:52or you have a smart Alexa connected coffee machine
00:31:55that on average costs between one and $2,000.
00:32:00There's one from Spin
00:32:02and then there's one recently from Bosch.
00:32:07There's just so much friction.
00:32:08So I'm testing the Bosch Coffee Maker
00:32:11and in theory it should make me a latte
00:32:13when I say good morning.
00:32:16But I spent in preparation
00:32:18for when I was sort of researching all of this,
00:32:20I spent about four hours trying to get it to work.
00:32:25This is the like key Alexa calculus
00:32:29that has never tipped in Alexa's favor, right?
00:32:32You can, a lot of what you just described,
00:32:34you can in theory set up, right?
00:32:37Like one of the things Amazon has tried to do
00:32:40to its credit is enable some of this stuff, right?
00:32:43And like I get a lot of crap on this show
00:32:45for hating Apple shortcuts
00:32:47because it gives you a lot of power,
00:32:49but it is essentially like really complicated
00:32:52scripting language.
00:32:53And so sure, right?
00:32:54If you are willing to do the work to learn all of that,
00:32:57great.
00:32:58The problem is then you've spent a bunch of money,
00:33:00you've done a ton of work,
00:33:02it doesn't work all the time.
00:33:03And then now I'm doing a bunch of maintenance.
00:33:06And so at each step along the way,
00:33:08you've lost a significant part
00:33:09of what makes this thing compelling in the first place.
00:33:12And now you're just doing,
00:33:14you're like doing a bit trying to get Alexa to work, right?
00:33:17It feels cool, but it's not actually less work.
00:33:20No, it's more work.
00:33:22Right, and so you get to a point where
00:33:24the math of how much time am I spending
00:33:27to make coffee every morning
00:33:29just doesn't tip in Alexa's favor.
00:33:32And it's true with so many things.
00:33:34And that has always been the thing for me
00:33:36that it's like, yeah,
00:33:37I could make the good morning routine work,
00:33:40but it would only work half the time
00:33:41and I'm gonna go have to fix all the things
00:33:43that doesn't get right every morning.
00:33:45And it's just not,
00:33:46I'll just walk into the room and turn the light on.
00:33:49That works.
00:33:51David, you're breaking my heart.
00:33:54No, and it kills me too,
00:33:55because I want all that stuff to work.
00:33:57And like once a year,
00:33:58I go through the work of setting all this stuff up again.
00:34:00And then the third time in a row, it doesn't work.
00:34:03I'm like, ah, nevermind.
00:34:04And I just tear it all out of the wall again.
00:34:05Or it works, but there's one thing actually
00:34:08that you didn't, you'd forgot
00:34:09that you don't want it to do that one time.
00:34:11Like your son's sleeping
00:34:14and they don't have to go to school that day,
00:34:15but it still turns the light on in their room.
00:34:17So, and again, that goes back to the context.
00:34:20You know, it needs to know more about your home
00:34:25and be more intelligent and not just command and control.
00:34:28That is actually a perfect segue
00:34:30into all of where this stuff is headed,
00:34:32which I think we're 10 years in
00:34:35and we're kind of at the beginning
00:34:36of maybe a next decade of new things on this front.
00:34:40We're going to take a really quick break.
00:34:41Will you stick around and talk to me
00:34:42about all that stuff too?
00:34:43Of course, I will be right here.
00:34:45All right, good.
00:34:53All right, we're back.
00:34:54Gen Two is still here.
00:34:55Hi, Gen.
00:34:56Hi.
00:34:57I just like talking about Alexa.
00:34:58This is fun.
00:34:59This is delightful.
00:35:00I have been on the hill of voice assistants
00:35:03will change everything for a very long time.
00:35:06And I have mostly been wrong.
00:35:08So let's talk about the ways the future might prove me
00:35:10and you right.
00:35:13One day.
00:35:14Yeah.
00:35:15How long do we get?
00:35:16Let's say 10 more years.
00:35:17I think the first decade, not so much for us.
00:35:20Decade number two, maybe.
00:35:22We're right in there.
00:35:23Hard maybe.
00:35:25So let's talk about kind of where we are at this moment,
00:35:29both in terms of what Alexa is
00:35:31and kind of what we know about where it's about to go.
00:35:34And I think you, I think relatively recently
00:35:37got to go see some version of like the perfect
00:35:41like platonic ideal of an Alexa system, right?
00:35:45That like Amazon's fever dream
00:35:47of what your house might look like.
00:35:48Yes, I did.
00:35:50I went for a tour of Amazon Smart Home Lab,
00:35:53which is in the Seattle headquarters.
00:35:56And I was excited when they suggested the idea
00:36:01and they said, you know,
00:36:02we can show you everything we have set up
00:36:04and it's sort of like an idealistic,
00:36:06like this is what the sort of ultimate
00:36:09Alexa powered ambient smart home looks like.
00:36:13You know, everything is connected and set up
00:36:15and you just need to say a few words.
00:36:19I was hoping for a bit more motion sensing action,
00:36:22like ambient action, but there was, you know,
00:36:24this was kind of like their ideal.
00:36:26So I was expecting honestly to be kind of blown away.
00:36:29Yeah, I mean, if ever it's going to feel like magic,
00:36:31it should be.
00:36:32Yes.
00:36:34Amazon with infinite resources
00:36:35and all of the people who made this thing at its disposal
00:36:38should be able to make it feel like magic.
00:36:40They should.
00:36:43I'm not looking forward to where we're headed here.
00:36:47Yeah, it was, I'm going to say it,
00:36:50it was very disappointing.
00:36:52Oh no, how so?
00:36:53Very nice apartment, beautiful views,
00:36:57sunny day too, Seattle.
00:36:59Okay.
00:37:01But it was pedestrian, you know, they had everything,
00:37:07hundreds of devices that could work
00:37:09with the voice assistant, echo devices everywhere,
00:37:13you know, robot vacuums, ring devices, fire TVs,
00:37:18and then lots of third party things.
00:37:20But they had like Lutron Caseta lights,
00:37:23had switchbot robot fingers, tons of fun gadgets.
00:37:28But ultimately it was all still command and control.
00:37:32And, you know, as we talked about,
00:37:33and Amazon has said along with in the same breath of,
00:37:38you know, this, our aspiration is the Star Trek computer.
00:37:41Our aspiration is an ambient smart home,
00:37:44a sort of a home that responds to you proactively
00:37:48without you having to do anything or do some very minimal,
00:37:52just say a few words or maybe press a button
00:37:55and what you want happens.
00:37:58And they had set up in the house,
00:38:01different routines in each room.
00:38:02So there was like a watch TV routine,
00:38:06there was a leaving the home routine,
00:38:08and of course a good morning routine,
00:38:11which I was excited to try out.
00:38:13I even got into the bed and got ready to start my day.
00:38:18And again, there'd no motion sensors.
00:38:20So I had to say a command to get things going.
00:38:25And it did the normal stuff.
00:38:27Turn the lights on, started the shower,
00:38:30which is something I've always wanted,
00:38:31but again, really expensive.
00:38:33If you've looked into Moen or Cola's smart showers,
00:38:36it's not cheap.
00:38:38So, you know, it just didn't sort of have that ambient feel.
00:38:42And also it was really slow and really laggy.
00:38:47And again, I'm like, guys,
00:38:49this is your sort of ultimate setup.
00:38:53And you're basically just reaffirming my feeling
00:38:56that this is still basically a remote control for your home,
00:39:01which is great, that has its use case,
00:39:03but it is not Star Trek's computer
00:39:05and it is not an ambient smart home.
00:39:08I actually, I love that distinction.
00:39:10Cause I think one other thing you and I have talked about
00:39:13over the years and that I've been forever fascinated by
00:39:15is universal remotes,
00:39:17which I actually think as a gadget
00:39:19are sort of woefully underdeveloped and under considered.
00:39:23And the idea that I can just sit and hold a thing
00:39:25and it becomes like a magic wand for all of my gear
00:39:28strikes me as A, much more attainable
00:39:30than some of the other stuff we're working on
00:39:32and B, really cool and useful.
00:39:34Like I have six or seven remotes
00:39:37just for the stuff here in my basement.
00:39:39And in terms of like actual human utility,
00:39:43putting all of that into one usable device
00:39:45makes a lot of sense.
00:39:46And so I think to your point,
00:39:47it's not nothing to turn this into something
00:39:49that can go do an individual thing on your behalf, right?
00:39:53Having like one interface for all of that stuff,
00:39:56even a command at a time is not nothing.
00:39:58It's also nowhere near the like big ambient computing,
00:40:04something that can do everything for you.
00:40:06And a word that Amazon has used more and more over time
00:40:09is proactively, right?
00:40:10Like the idea is not just that you should be able to ask it
00:40:13to do it for you and it will,
00:40:15it should be able to do it for you.
00:40:17Just the fact that you have to say good morning
00:40:20in order to tell it that you've woken up
00:40:21and to start the routine
00:40:22is actually a failure of the system.
00:40:25It should just know you've woken up
00:40:27and do the things for you, right?
00:40:28And again, all that technology is there.
00:40:31There's these people, like again, it costs a billion dollars
00:40:33but like you can buy the eight sleep thing
00:40:34that tracks your sleep
00:40:35and the pieces of the puzzle are sitting there
00:40:39and Alexa was supposed to be the thing
00:40:41that put them all together
00:40:42in such a way that you didn't have to.
00:40:44And right now we're still on the universal remote phase.
00:40:47Well, and to Alexa's credit,
00:40:49it is, if there is one thing that is more difficult
00:40:53to navigate than voice control,
00:40:54it is a universal remote.
00:40:56Fair, fair, there are like eight Logitech Harmony owners
00:41:02out there screaming, I want you to know I hear you
00:41:04and I love you, but it's true.
00:41:07But you know, universal remotes have their place
00:41:10but there's also a reason why
00:41:12there are very few of them around.
00:41:15What the problem with universal remote
00:41:17and with Alexa as it is today
00:41:20is that specific nomenclature.
00:41:22The fact that you have to say specific words
00:41:26to get Alexa to do something
00:41:28or press a specific sequence of buttons
00:41:30on your universal remote.
00:41:32But yeah, it's that the ambient part is the intelligence
00:41:37and neither of those things currently have the intelligence
00:41:42and you know, there are,
00:41:45that's where, that's the next step in the smart home.
00:41:48Whether it's Amazon that can bring that intelligence
00:41:51or another company, there are many, many trying.
00:41:55That's what we need.
00:41:56We need the systems that can understand context,
00:42:00that can understand everything that's in our home.
00:42:03I mean, when I spoke with Dave Limp
00:42:05when they had their last event in October of 2023,
00:42:09he said, we are feeding all of every smart home manual
00:42:13ever made into Alexa to make it more intelligent
00:42:16so that it knows the devices in your home.
00:42:18That's what, it needs that knowledge
00:42:21but then it also needs the intelligence
00:42:23to be able to act on them.
00:42:24For example, I have a smart faucet in my kitchen
00:42:29and if I go up to it to, or I can use Alexa
00:42:34to have it do fun things like dispense two cups of water
00:42:39at 90 degrees, you know, perfect for a baby bottle.
00:42:42I mean, you can set these presets
00:42:44but I have to, I'll be standing in front of the faucet
00:42:47and I will have to say, Alexa,
00:42:49ask Moen to dispense two cups of water at 90 degrees
00:42:54and sometimes it will say, okay,
00:42:58and sometimes it will say, I can't do that.
00:43:00Please set up your devices again.
00:43:03Something along those lines.
00:43:05And then my husband was watching me
00:43:08try and play with this the other day
00:43:09and he said, shouldn't it just know
00:43:11that you're standing in front of the kitchen faucet
00:43:14and when you say, I want two cups of hot water, just do it?
00:43:18And it should, and it could.
00:43:20That is a future we could have.
00:43:22There's enough technology, just even in Echo devices
00:43:25and also in devices like from Apple and Google
00:43:29that you have in your home,
00:43:30their smart speakers, things like UWB, radar,
00:43:34there's the technology is there.
00:43:35I mean, for God's sake, Amazon owns Ring
00:43:37which makes a drone with a camera
00:43:39that will fly around your house.
00:43:41Allegedly.
00:43:42Fair, it allegedly will do that, it's a fair point.
00:43:47But yeah, again, and I think we should just say
00:43:50and then move on from the fact that
00:43:53all of this requires a deep privacy trade-off
00:43:58in a way that should make people uncomfortable
00:44:00and is a trade-off that we are going to need
00:44:02to reckon with as people.
00:44:04If that technology is ever going to get
00:44:06to what you're describing,
00:44:08we are going to have to make some like
00:44:10very conscious decisions about,
00:44:12I want my speaker to be aware that I'm standing at the sink.
00:44:17And we should just leave that conversation for another time
00:44:20because I think that is a place where like
00:44:23everyone is going to have to make personal decisions
00:44:25about how they feel about that stuff.
00:44:27But that is what it requires.
00:44:28I do need to just interject
00:44:29because we've gone almost an hour
00:44:30and I haven't mentioned the M word,
00:44:32but this is where matter could help.
00:44:34Oh God.
00:44:35Well, that's the verge caster.
00:44:40So whilst it's up to the platforms, how they implement,
00:44:44and my money would be on Amazon using the cloud,
00:44:47gosh, not sure why, but anyway,
00:44:50a platform, a smart home platform using matter
00:44:52can keep all of that information entirely local
00:44:56and use that data locally.
00:44:59So, but we'll put a pin in that.
00:45:01Yeah, we'll have many more chances
00:45:03to have that version of the conversation.
00:45:05But to your point,
00:45:06this is the future everyone imagines, right?
00:45:10I think that the really interesting point
00:45:12we're at right now is anyone thinking about
00:45:15this kind of ambient computing future
00:45:17thinks about it roughly the same way.
00:45:19The goal is the same.
00:45:20And we're at a moment right now
00:45:21where everyone thinks it's the same technology
00:45:23that's going to get us there.
00:45:25Which again, brings us to Dave Limp a year ago,
00:45:29who, I don't know, I guess in retrospect,
00:45:32like way pre-announced a gigantic reboot of Alexa.
00:45:38Am I overstating it to put it like that?
00:45:39No, I mean, he got on stage
00:45:42and demoed a new, very much more conversational Alexa.
00:45:46That was the kind of the big show off
00:45:48was being able to talk to the voice assistant naturally,
00:45:52not having to constantly repeat the wake word
00:45:56and have it, it had more personality.
00:45:59Like it was kind of joking with him
00:46:00and that sort of natural conversation,
00:46:03which was again, the sort of the North Star,
00:46:06the Star Trek computer being able to speak naturally
00:46:09and have a conversation
00:46:10is something they've been working towards.
00:46:12And this demo did show that it was almost reality.
00:46:19They also at that event,
00:46:22talked about how Alexa was gonna be able to do
00:46:24more of what we've been talking about here
00:46:26and sort of do more intelligent responses.
00:46:31One of the things is sort of multi-step routines.
00:46:34So you could create something just by telling Alexa
00:46:38a list of things you want it to accomplish,
00:46:40like to a computer and have it just reel those off
00:46:46without you having to go into an app and set up a routine
00:46:49and then set up a trigger.
00:46:51So you don't have to spend your time
00:46:53programming your smart home.
00:46:55You just think, oh, actually I want this to happen right now.
00:46:57Alexa do it for me and it will do it.
00:46:59And then, this is a sort of their new vision,
00:47:05how it's going to get there.
00:47:07I mean, ultimately what I would like is something like
00:47:10that I would like to be able to have Alexa
00:47:13follow through on the commands that I have,
00:47:14but also understand the context of them.
00:47:18So for example, an idea I sort of came up
00:47:21with what I would love to be able to say
00:47:22is something like, Alexa, tell my son
00:47:25not to forget his science project.
00:47:26Set the alarm when he leaves in the morning,
00:47:29then unlock the back door at 4 p.m. for the plumber,
00:47:32lock it again at five, and then preheat the oven
00:47:35at six o'clock, but if I'm running late,
00:47:37adjust the time so you don't burn the house down.
00:47:40And it would need, but Amazon's gonna need
00:47:43a lot more context to be able to do this type of thing.
00:47:46And this is the type of thing that we're already seeing
00:47:49hints of in the other ecosystems.
00:47:51That's some of what Siri may be able to do
00:47:55in terms of the intelligent Siri,
00:47:57not the smart home control,
00:47:58but understanding that I'm running late.
00:48:00Oh, now there goes Siri.
00:48:02This is great.
00:48:05She's on it.
00:48:06Don't worry.
00:48:07I'm glad.
00:48:08I look forward to what she comes back with.
00:48:11There it is.
00:48:14Siri, everybody.
00:48:15All right, keep going.
00:48:16Sorry, I forgot about that one.
00:48:19This is great.
00:48:19We're leaving all of this in.
00:48:21This is a real show, not tell thing we're doing here.
00:48:23I love it.
00:48:24I can go with Google Next.
00:48:25Hey, Google, you wanna pipe up?
00:48:28No, it doesn't listen.
00:48:30There's one right here.
00:48:33Nothing, nothing.
00:48:35Yeah, yeah.
00:48:36This is why the Alexa team is not afraid of Google and Apple.
00:48:39No.
00:48:42Okay, sorry.
00:48:44But yeah, and that context-aware voice assistant
00:48:48is the kind of the holy grail for me.
00:48:51That is the computer.
00:48:51That is the ambient technology.
00:48:54And speaking of the type of technology
00:48:57that Apple said it's bringing to Siri
00:48:58with the contextually aware Siri,
00:49:00you could imagine,
00:49:02and this may be something a little bit out there
00:49:05and might scare most people.
00:49:07I don't have an answer for that.
00:49:08Is there something else I can help with?
00:49:12Is something like this.
00:49:13Okay, so it's soccer night.
00:49:16I'm working in my home office.
00:49:18My mom is bringing the kids home
00:49:21and she's texted me that she's bringing a frozen pizza.
00:49:24So my smart assistant sees the text message,
00:49:26knows that it's my mom and not me,
00:49:28because I'm also mom,
00:49:31and starts preheating the oven,
00:49:34so that the frozen pizza can go in
00:49:37as soon as they get home,
00:49:38unlocks the door at 6.30,
00:49:40which is when they said they were gonna arrive,
00:49:42turns on the air purifier because it knows the oven's on.
00:49:45And then after we've had dinner,
00:49:48the robot vacuum will just automatically start
00:49:50a quiet clean and mop of the kitchen.
00:49:53And then if someone has thought to shut the dishwasher,
00:49:56it will start running automatically.
00:49:58And then I sit down on the couch
00:50:01and without having to say anything or do anything,
00:50:03because UWB sensors in my HomePod minis
00:50:07or my Alexa soundbar,
00:50:09know that we're sitting on the couch,
00:50:11the lights dim down,
00:50:12the TV turns on
00:50:14and it knows the kids are there.
00:50:16So it starts playing something family friendly
00:50:19that it knows we like watching,
00:50:20like say last night's recording of The Voice.
00:50:22Yes, I do like The Voice.
00:50:24And then at 8.30, it turns off
00:50:27because it knows it's bedtime.
00:50:29Maybe my Moen smart faucet,
00:50:32if they had one for the bath,
00:50:33would start running a bath for me at the right temperature,
00:50:36turn the lights on upstairs,
00:50:38play some soothing music.
00:50:40And I haven't had to do anything.
00:50:42My assistant and my home
00:50:45has pulled all that together for me.
00:50:48I mean, is that the dream
00:50:50or does that slightly terrify you?
00:50:53I mean, both to be honest.
00:50:54And I think that's mostly the dream.
00:50:58I think there are bits and pieces of that
00:51:00that I think the sort of perfectly proactive assistant
00:51:04is actually the wrong answer.
00:51:06Like one thing I've learned over time
00:51:08talking to people who work at streaming companies
00:51:10is that the idea of you just sit down
00:51:12and it plays the perfect thing for you
00:51:14is actually not correct.
00:51:16It's the like, the Amazon thing of like,
00:51:19what if they could just ship you the stuff that you want?
00:51:20Like people like to shop, right?
00:51:22People like to browse.
00:51:22And even the thing that is technically
00:51:24the perfect thing for you to watch.
00:51:25David, David, you don't have a 13 year old
00:51:27and a 16 year old.
00:51:28Listen, I didn't say it's a good thing
00:51:31that people like to do this,
00:51:32but people do like to do this.
00:51:34And the idea of like, if you sit down,
00:51:37even if what you want to watch is The Voice,
00:51:39if it just puts the voice on for you, it feels weird.
00:51:41And so I think there are things about like,
00:51:43if my house just starts drawing me a bath at bath time,
00:51:46there's something odd about that.
00:51:47But if it can chime in and be like,
00:51:49hey, would you like me to?
00:51:51Right, that starts to feel really valuable, right?
00:51:53So I think there's a really interesting
00:51:55interface question there where it's like Friday night
00:51:58and it's like, oh, is it movie night tonight?
00:52:00And you're like, yes, it is.
00:52:01And then it does the whole thing.
00:52:02Whereas instead you have to come in.
00:52:03It's proactive.
00:52:04Right, and when you have a personal assistant,
00:52:07you talk to them, right?
00:52:08I know, I don't want to talk.
00:52:10But like if you had a human personal assistant,
00:52:13you would talk to them and they would ask you questions.
00:52:15And that's a fine set of interactions.
00:52:18You wouldn't have to say their name
00:52:20and then a series of words in the correct order, right?
00:52:22So I think there's a bunch of really interesting
00:52:24interface questions there.
00:52:26But with the LLM stuff
00:52:30that everybody is betting on right now,
00:52:33the thing I keep thinking about
00:52:34is that what it will definitely do,
00:52:36I feel very good about the fact that
00:52:38large language models are going to make
00:52:40understanding your queries better, right?
00:52:44Like we have ample evidence now that
00:52:47for things like speech to text
00:52:48and for natural language processing and text to speech,
00:52:51LLMs are very good.
00:52:52They're better than the systems we had before.
00:52:53So I think the idea that I'm going to be able to say
00:52:56that paragraph of things that you just said
00:53:00to Alexa and it will understand them,
00:53:02I feel very good about that.
00:53:03Yeah.
00:53:04But as we've seen for 10 years,
00:53:07that's only part of the process.
00:53:08And LLMs don't solve any of the other parts of the process.
00:53:11And I think your point about what
00:53:15Google and Apple can do here is really important
00:53:18because A, they both have access to your phone,
00:53:20which gives them location data.
00:53:21It gives them lots of information about your contacts,
00:53:23which is really important.
00:53:24All this kind of stuff.
00:53:25I also think Google has a big advantage
00:53:27because it's connected to things like your calendar
00:53:29and your email more intimately in a lot of ways
00:53:33and also has like your web search, which is very powerful.
00:53:36Apple gets a lot of that because if it's Google deals,
00:53:38like there's some weird antitrust things going on here,
00:53:40but Amazon doesn't have any of that
00:53:42and really doesn't have a path to getting any of that
00:53:44in any way that I can tell.
00:53:45Unless you feed it to it,
00:53:46which is an extra step on your part.
00:53:48Right, sure.
00:53:49And I think, like, do I want to give Alexa access
00:53:53to my Gmail is, again, personal question.
00:53:56There are probably upsides to doing that over time.
00:54:00Kind of like TripIt, forward my emails to Alexa.
00:54:02Right, exactly, exactly.
00:54:04But I think, like, I have found myself using Gemini a lot
00:54:07to look for information in my Google stuff.
00:54:10And that's really powerful.
00:54:12And Amazon just has none of that.
00:54:13And so Alexa has none of that.
00:54:15And I think if I were to like galaxy brain
00:54:18all of the crazy gadget launches
00:54:21Amazon has had over the years,
00:54:22they are so desperate to put Alexa in front of you
00:54:25at all times that you will just accidentally
00:54:27end up giving it all of that information.
00:54:29Seriously, like, and I think that's not a crazy strategy,
00:54:31right, to say, if you're wearing glasses
00:54:35that have Alexa baked in, you're gonna talk to Alexa more.
00:54:37And thus, you're gonna tell it more information.
00:54:39You're gonna have it remind you of more stuff.
00:54:41It might gain more information just by listening.
00:54:44Like, there are a lot of things it can do
00:54:46with that kind of ubiquity.
00:54:48But A, it doesn't have that.
00:54:49B, it's not going to anytime soon.
00:54:50And C, even that I don't think is enough.
00:54:53So I get to this point where I'm like,
00:54:54maybe Alexa is about to get a lot better
00:54:57at the thing it was already good at
00:54:58and not that much better at anything else.
00:55:02But maybe that's cynical.
00:55:04Well, it definitely feels like there is a big reset coming.
00:55:07I mean, we got the tease of the new Alexa
00:55:09or the remarkable Alexa,
00:55:11as it's been reportedly referred to in,
00:55:15there was a big piece by the Wall Street Journal
00:55:17sort of talking about all the problems Amazon has had.
00:55:21And that was the rumor is that it's remarkable.
00:55:24I think, I'm not sure about remarkable.
00:55:26I'm not a big fan of that.
00:55:27But anyway.
00:55:28Also kind of a sick burn of 10 years of Alexa.
00:55:31We had pedestrian Alexa and now we have remarkable, yeah.
00:55:34But you know, they have a new hardware chief, Panos Panay.
00:55:39Friend of the Verge cast.
00:55:40Friend of the Verge cast,
00:55:42who did not want to talk about new Alexa
00:55:44the last time you had him on.
00:55:46No, he did not.
00:55:47Not at all.
00:55:48But he did hint quite heavily that it's coming.
00:55:52And this year I picked up on in that conversation.
00:55:56And I think there is a big reset
00:55:58and we haven't had a full event this year.
00:56:01It's the first time in a while.
00:56:02So we haven't had dozens of new devices.
00:56:05We've, instead there's been dribs and drabs of news
00:56:08coming out over the last few weeks
00:56:10that you would have totally been part of a big event.
00:56:12Like there's a new Outdoor Aero.
00:56:15Ring has finally got 24 seven recording.
00:56:17New Kindle.
00:56:19Lots of Kindles.
00:56:19So many Kindles.
00:56:21There's also more devices going away.
00:56:24We know that Echo Dot with Clock, RIP,
00:56:27that went a few months ago.
00:56:28Rumor has it that Echo Show 15 is on the outs.
00:56:31It's been out of stock for a long time.
00:56:34More services being killed.
00:56:37Alexa Together, which was their home care service,
00:56:40which I really, I thought was a great service.
00:56:42But you know, we're seeing a big reset.
00:56:44We've seen Andy Jassy has been reported
00:56:46that he's sort of culling the devices and services division.
00:56:50But I'm hoping that this is all in a sort of
00:56:53streamlined effort.
00:56:55For what I said at the beginning of the conversation
00:56:57is that they had too much emphasis on gadgets and gizmos
00:57:02and not enough on the core value proposition
00:57:05of what the assistant can offer.
00:57:08And trimming the cruff and hopefully
00:57:11bringing everything together in a much more focused,
00:57:16usable way with a better UI, better voice interface
00:57:22powered by LLMs.
00:57:23I think, I know they have their own Alexa LLM,
00:57:27but there's been reports that they're also gonna be using,
00:57:30I think, is it Claude?
00:57:32So there's lots going on.
00:57:34It's just a question of, are they gonna get it right?
00:57:38Is it going to be a new hardware shift?
00:57:41Which would be a tough sell
00:57:44because there's a lot of Echos out there.
00:57:47But also I kind of feel like we need it.
00:57:49Like the Echo has sort of become, you know,
00:57:51a throwaway gadget.
00:57:54I saw so many reports in my research of people like,
00:57:56well, I have three or four Echo Dots in cupboards and drawers
00:58:01and just don't use them because they're commoditized, cheap.
00:58:04And you can buy them for $18.
00:58:06And there's no real expectation of anything great
00:58:09coming out of a cheap piece of hardware on your table.
00:58:16It's definitely a moment where I think
00:58:19they have the opportunity to do something pretty
00:58:24exciting, just like they did 10 years ago
00:58:26when they launched Alexa on November 6th, 2014.
00:58:32But are we gonna get it?
00:58:33Do you think Amazon is right to still call it Alexa?
00:58:36I think a question we've been asking a lot is,
00:58:40are the old ways of thinking about these voice assistants
00:58:43the right way to think about the next wave of them?
00:58:45And Google is basically killing Google Assistant
00:58:48in favor of Gemini.
00:58:49Apple still seems to be using Siri,
00:58:52but Apple Intelligence is very much
00:58:54the sort of bigger umbrella brand
00:58:56than Siri is at this point.
00:58:58Amazon appears to still be all the way bought into Alexa
00:59:02as the thing, and is very much going to
00:59:06sort of bake new technology into all of the existing stuff
00:59:09rather than just kind of wiping the slate and starting over.
00:59:11Do you think that's the right call?
00:59:12Yeah, so from talking to all three,
00:59:15people at all three companies about this,
00:59:18it sounds like the technology,
00:59:20there's a real disconnect
00:59:22between what the current voice assistants can do
00:59:24and what the LLMs can do.
00:59:27And the LLMs cannot do a lot
00:59:30of what the current voice assistants can do.
00:59:32Like I had heard rumors from one company
00:59:35that they basically were having to rebuild
00:59:38everything they had done for their previous voice assistant
00:59:40for their new LLM.
00:59:42And it's like, why are we doing this?
00:59:43This, you know, reinventing the wheel.
00:59:46So it feels to me like a machine or a merging
00:59:49of the two makes the most sense.
00:59:51But again, not an engineer,
00:59:53this may be a technical impossibility.
00:59:54There may be too much technical baggage
00:59:57buried underneath Alexa and Siri and Google's assistant
01:00:00that just will not mesh with the future pathway.
01:00:03But I think we need to keep the names.
01:00:06We do not need new names.
01:00:08That's just, that seems like a non-starter to me.
01:00:11And especially for Amazon, I mean,
01:00:12they spent a decade building a very recognizable brand
01:00:16that they constantly tell me people love.
01:00:18Like people love their Alexa.
01:00:20I think that's true.
01:00:21I think people think Siri sucks and Alexa is great.
01:00:25Yes.
01:00:25Limited but great.
01:00:26And Google's smarter.
01:00:28Yeah, Google assistant is kind of,
01:00:29it's like the nerdy weird kid in the corner, right?
01:00:32That it's like, it's very cool,
01:00:33but no one really talks about it.
01:00:36But it does some impressive stuff.
01:00:38But I do think it's true that I think,
01:00:40I think you could have made the case
01:00:41that walking away from Siri
01:00:42would have been a smart move for Apple.
01:00:44Yes.
01:00:45Just given the baggage of Siri.
01:00:46I don't think Alexa has that baggage.
01:00:48People mostly have settled into
01:00:52this thing is for music and timers,
01:00:53but like you said, it costs $18, so who cares?
01:00:56And now if Amazon can say,
01:00:58oh, this thing that you bought
01:01:00now has incredible new capabilities,
01:01:02that's really powerful.
01:01:05It remains to be seen whether that is the case.
01:01:07And I think with a lot of LLMs,
01:01:09we continue to be sold a bill of goods
01:01:10that is not based in reality in a lot of ways.
01:01:15But also, I tend to think you're right.
01:01:18I could imagine a world in which Amazon is like,
01:01:20here's a whole new brand, we're changing everything.
01:01:22But also, these things are everywhere.
01:01:25They're pretty simple hardware,
01:01:27and it's all in the cloud anyway.
01:01:29So if they can just suddenly upgrade everyone's speakers
01:01:32in some massive way, that becomes pretty powerful.
01:01:35Well, my original Echo, which is in my husband's garage,
01:01:39according to Dave Limp at the event last year,
01:01:41will be updated to support the new Alexa.
01:01:43It might have another 10 years in it.
01:01:45It might.
01:01:46Who knows?
01:01:47I mean, that's pretty impressive.
01:01:48And that's a whole infrastructure
01:01:49that I don't see Amazon getting rid of.
01:01:52And yeah, I think that's the right move.
01:01:56Make Alexa smarter, and the capabilities
01:02:00and the possibilities just get really interesting.
01:02:03I'm excited to see what they can do.
01:02:04I just want them to hurry up and do it.
01:02:07You and me and everybody at this point.
01:02:09But here's what we're gonna do.
01:02:10You're gonna have to come back when they launch it,
01:02:11which, as far as we know,
01:02:12might be in the next couple of weeks.
01:02:13Like next week.
01:02:14Yeah.
01:02:15But we're both going to review
01:02:17whatever the new Alexa is on the very first Echo.
01:02:19I'm gonna find mine.
01:02:20It's somewhere, and we're gonna talk about it.
01:02:22We're gonna have 10-year-old hardware
01:02:23with brand new software,
01:02:24and we're gonna see if magic has really happened in 10 years.
01:02:27That sounds like a good plan.
01:02:28Awesome.
01:02:29All right, Jen, thank you, as always.
01:02:31Again, I suspect we will see you again very soon.
01:02:33Sounds good.
01:02:34Thanks.
01:02:35See ya.
01:02:36Bye.
01:02:37All right, we gotta take one more break,
01:02:39and then we're gonna come back
01:02:40and take a question from the Verticast hotline.
01:02:43All right, we're back.
01:02:44Let's get to the hotline.
01:02:45As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11.
01:02:48The email is verticast at theverge.com.
01:02:50We love all of your questions.
01:02:52Please keep sending them.
01:02:53Keep calling in.
01:02:55Hearing from you is the absolute best.
01:02:57We got a bunch more episodes to do this year.
01:03:00Cannot wait for your hotline questions.
01:03:02Love everything that everybody's been sending.
01:03:04Thank you so much for watching.
01:03:05I'll see you next time.
01:03:06Bye.
01:03:13Thank you, as always.
01:03:14This week, we have both a question
01:03:17and a product idea about AirPods.
01:03:20Tear it.
01:03:21Hey, Verticast.
01:03:23This is Kyle calling in from Texas,
01:03:25and I had a question for y'all.
01:03:26I was listening to your episode
01:03:27on the new hearing aid updates to Apple's AirPods,
01:03:30and while the new update sounds exciting,
01:03:32and I'm looking forward to seeing how people benefit
01:03:34from the testing capabilities and hearing aid functionality,
01:03:37your discussion got me thinking.
01:03:39Don't kill me,
01:03:40but I sometimes do the same thing that y'all mentioned
01:03:42where if I'm ordering something,
01:03:43I just take one of them out,
01:03:45and in most social settings nowadays,
01:03:47that seems to pretty consistently communicate
01:03:49that you're listening to the other person,
01:03:51especially since nearly all headphones
01:03:53pause whenever you're listening to,
01:03:55but since that doesn't work
01:03:56for those using AirPods as hearing aids,
01:03:58I had an idea.
01:04:00What if Apple added LEDs to their headphones?
01:04:03This would high-key be copying Samsung's new models,
01:04:06but even though it would take some time
01:04:08for everyone to learn,
01:04:10it might allow you to tell
01:04:11if someone else wearing AirPods
01:04:13can hear you speaking to them.
01:04:15It would kind of be like the way
01:04:16Apple tried to have EyeSight on the Vision Pro
01:04:18communicate where the user is paying attention,
01:04:20but hopefully not in a way
01:04:22that's deeply in the uncanny valley.
01:04:24I thought it was a fun idea,
01:04:26but maybe we'll instead,
01:04:27we'll just get used to people wearing headphones in public,
01:04:30but I was really interested to hear
01:04:32if y'all thought it might work.
01:04:34Thanks again so much for taking my call.
01:04:36Love the show.
01:04:37Bye.
01:04:38Okay, I shared this call for two reasons.
01:04:40One, because I actually think it's an awesome idea,
01:04:43and I think the idea of putting
01:04:45some kind of notification LED on AirPods
01:04:50to signal really whatever you want it to signal,
01:04:52but in this case, it would be to signal
01:04:53that they're in hearing aid mode,
01:04:55actually fits with what we're seeing
01:04:56from a lot of technology right now, right?
01:04:59He mentioned the face stuff on the Vision Pro,
01:05:02but to me, this sounds more like what you see
01:05:05on the latest run of smart glasses,
01:05:08probably the easiest example
01:05:09is the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses,
01:05:11where they actually have a light
01:05:13that says essentially, you're being recorded.
01:05:15And I think that stuff is still pretty new,
01:05:18and we're still figuring it out.
01:05:19And I mean, you rewind back to Google Glass
01:05:21and the idea of there being a light
01:05:23suggesting that you're being recorded
01:05:25didn't actually help anybody
01:05:27and just made everything feel gross and bad
01:05:29and didn't solve a lot of problems.
01:05:31But I think we're at a point now
01:05:32where those kinds of things can be communicated, right?
01:05:38Where you're saying, okay,
01:05:39this is listening to you in some way.
01:05:42And I actually think the idea of using an LED
01:05:44to mean essentially you are being captured by my device
01:05:48in some meaningful way kind of works, right?
01:05:50Whether it's the camera is on and I can see you
01:05:53and I'm taking video of you,
01:05:54or my headphones are capturing what you're saying
01:05:57and feeding it to me.
01:05:58Either one of those, if you pull it all the way down
01:06:00is just you are being captured in some way.
01:06:03And I think if that's all we need these LEDs to signify,
01:06:06that can really work.
01:06:07It'll take some marketing work
01:06:09to get people to understand that
01:06:11and it'll take some time
01:06:12for it to sort of societally catch on.
01:06:14But I would actually rather land in that place
01:06:18than just pure constant acceptance of headphones.
01:06:22Because if we get to the point
01:06:23where you're wearing headphones
01:06:25and I still assume that I can talk to you,
01:06:28I think that's bad.
01:06:28And I think that's wrong, frankly, in a lot of ways.
01:06:31Headphones as a signal of leave me alone
01:06:34are actually really powerful and valuable.
01:06:37And also it's just true that a lot of the times
01:06:40when you're wearing headphones, you can't hear other people.
01:06:42So having a much more aggressive signal that says,
01:06:45I can hear you, I am capturing you in some way,
01:06:48works for me.
01:06:49So I think that's a great idea.
01:06:50I hope Apple does something like it.
01:06:52I think we might be giving Samsung a little too much credit.
01:06:55Samsung just like put LEDs on the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro
01:06:59that don't really do anything.
01:07:01I think they light up when you turn on the find my feature,
01:07:05sure, but they can't show battery.
01:07:07They don't show when they're in various modes.
01:07:11There are a bunch of things they could do there.
01:07:13I think the lights actually look good.
01:07:15In Samsung's case, they're mostly just aesthetic,
01:07:17but it's proof that you could do something like this.
01:07:20And I think that's very compelling.
01:07:21So I'm in favor of this idea, 100%.
01:07:23I hope Apple does it.
01:07:25But the other reason I share this
01:07:26is because we get a lot of feedback from people
01:07:28when Chris Welch and I talked about
01:07:30the hearing aid mode on the AirPods.
01:07:32And especially when we talked about the societal shift
01:07:36that is coming for headphones.
01:07:38And I think I've been pretty blase about it
01:07:42to a certain extent, right?
01:07:43Like I look at my nephews who are both teenagers.
01:07:47They most of the time just have one AirPod in,
01:07:50and I don't really think anything of it.
01:07:51But then I talked to lots of other people
01:07:53who view that as rude and off-putting
01:07:56and deliberately removing yourself
01:07:59from a social situation in some way.
01:08:00I'm confident they don't see it that way,
01:08:03but it might be that way anyway.
01:08:06So I think that piece of it is complicated
01:08:09and it's not gonna get easier.
01:08:11But if we want these devices to be these kinds of
01:08:14always on augmented reality devices
01:08:17that are genuinely useful for people's health,
01:08:20but also more and more useful
01:08:21just in day-to-day life for people,
01:08:24that is going to require these huge societal changes.
01:08:29So either we get the LEDs
01:08:31or we're gonna have to figure out
01:08:33the right and wrong ways to wear headphones.
01:08:35And I just wanna know what everybody thinks about that.
01:08:38This is a thing we've gotten a lot of feedback about.
01:08:40I'd like to hear your thoughts too.
01:08:42How should we think about headphones in the real world?
01:08:46Especially as headphones become
01:08:48more than just music devices,
01:08:51as they become something that actually augments
01:08:53your ability to go through your life
01:08:54while also being a way to listen to music and TikTok.
01:08:57How do we navigate that?
01:08:59What is the right answer for headphones?
01:09:01Should we enter a world where
01:09:02we're all wearing headphones all the time
01:09:04and we just kind of figure it out?
01:09:06Should headphones just be outlawed forever
01:09:08and things that are hearing aids
01:09:10should look like hearing aids?
01:09:11Is there an interesting answer somewhere in between,
01:09:13both culturally and in product?
01:09:16I wanna hear all your feedback.
01:09:17This has turned out to be a much bigger,
01:09:19more interesting thing than I expected.
01:09:22So please hit us up.
01:09:23I wanna hear everything.
01:09:24We're gonna keep talking about this
01:09:25in more and more ways in the coming months
01:09:28because I think this matters in some pretty big ways.
01:09:31All right, that is it for The Verge cast today.
01:09:32Thank you to everybody who was on the show.
01:09:34Thank you for listening.
01:09:35Thank you for calling the hotline.
01:09:37Thank you for being a part of this with us.
01:09:39There's lots more about everything we talked about,
01:09:40including this mini package of stories we did
01:09:43about the legacy and future of Alexa at theverge.com.
01:09:46I'll link to all of it in the show notes.
01:09:48But as always, read theverge.com.
01:09:50It's a big week this week.
01:09:52Go vote if you haven't voted yet.
01:09:53And if you're listening to this
01:09:54on Tuesday in the United States,
01:09:56go vote, read our election package.
01:09:59Lots of great stories in there.
01:10:00Read the endorsement, go vote.
01:10:02Best of luck to everybody out there.
01:10:03As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings,
01:10:06or other Alexa devices you would like to set off
01:10:08inside of my house,
01:10:09you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com
01:10:11or call the hotline, 866-VERGE11.
01:10:14We love hearing from you.
01:10:15This show is produced by Liam James,
01:10:16Will Poore, and Eric Gomez.
01:10:18VergeCast is a Verge production
01:10:19and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:10:22Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about,
01:10:24honestly, I couldn't even guess at this point
01:10:26because it's an election week
01:10:28and I suspect we'll be talking about that
01:10:30plus some other product news,
01:10:31plus a bunch of Apple stuff that's shipping this week.
01:10:34Lots to do.
01:10:35We'll see you then.
01:10:35Rock and roll.