Home Artificial Intelligence Amazon refreshes its Echo lineup, adds a Wi-Fi extender and smart speaker combo, Echo Pop

Amazon refreshes its Echo lineup, adds a Wi-Fi extender and smart speaker combo, Echo Pop

46
Amazon refreshes its Echo lineup, adds a Wi-Fi extender and smart speaker combo, Echo Pop

After last fall’s Amazon hardware event, which brought us a handful of latest Echo devices, just like the Dot with the clock and other minor updates, Amazon today is rolling out a broader refresh of its Echo lineup, which incorporates a latest form factor with the arrival of the Echo Pop. While the present Dot is more of a rounded, bubble-shaped Echo, the Pop is a semi-circle and is available in teen-friendly colours like lavender and teal, while also serving to increase your house’s Wi-Fi network due to eero.

Alongside the launch, Amazon also unveiled other updated Echo devices, including the Echo Show 5, Echo Buds and Echo Auto, and offered more context about the way it sees AI impacting Alexa’s future.

Until recently, Alexa’s future was seemingly uncertain, given reports of the billions of dollars the division has lost, its failures to encourage voice shopping and, later, the larger cost-cutting measures on the retail giant, which included layoffs in Amazon’s devices group.

Nonetheless, SVP of Alexa Rohit Prasad downplays the impact those cuts had on Alexa, telling TechCrunch that of the two,000 people let go inside Amazon’s Devices and Services organization, only “a fraction of those were in Alexa,” he says. “Contrary to among the things written, it was very small in context,” Prasad argues. “By way of our roadmap and our conviction, Alexa is considered one of the most important investments at Amazon and our conviction has only grown — especially on this time of how exciting AI is and what could be a quantitatively different, higher, and more useful Alexa for our customers.”

Or, reading between the lines, Alexa’s AI potential outpaces that of the devices where it currently lives, just like the Echo speakers, given its ability to increase its learnings elsewhere inside Amazon.

“I’m very optimistic that…the AI advances shall be massive, but we are literally contributing to the Amazon businesses,” Prasad adds. “And I think that Alexa is well on its trajectory to be that non-public AI — which can even be a successful business for us.”

Image Credits: Amazon

As for the products themselves, the brand new $39.99 Echo Pop, which could seemingly eat into the Dot’s market share, has a front-facing directional speaker and is powered by the Amazon AZ2 Neural Edge processor. It also comes with eero Built-in, allowing the device so as to add as much as 1,000 square feet of coverage to an existing eero Wi-Fi network, giving the device a dual purpose.

Along with “Lavender Bloom” and “Midnight Teal,” the Pop is available in black and white.

Amazon says the Pop is along with, and never a substitute for, its existing Dot lineup, and the Dot and Dot with Clock remain available.

Image Credits: Amazon

Meanwhile, the $89.99 Echo Show 5 and $99.99 Echo Show 5 Kids edition each got an upgrade that makes them now 20% faster than the prior generation. Each also include a re-engineered microphone array, a faster AZ2 Neural Edge processor and an upgraded speaker system that guarantees a doubling of the bass and clearer sound.

They usually now support the brand new smart home standard Matter, as does the brand new Echo Pop.

Image Credits: Amazon

The children’ device — available within the U.S., U.K. and Germany — is barely costlier because it features a yr of the subscription service Amazon Kids+, offering ad-free and age-appropriate apps, games, Alexa skills and audiobooks, plus other kid-friendly features just like the AI-powered story making tool, Create with Alexa. The latter has two latest themes: Dinosaurs and Jazzy Jungle.

Image Credits: Amazon

Amazon’s $49.99 Alexa earbuds, Echo Buds, are also being updated with richer sound via a 12mm dynamic driver, improved clarity and a longer-lasting battery.

The brand new Buds stand up to 5 hours of continuous playback, and as much as 20 total hours of listening from a full case charge — the latter is up from 15 hours, within the prior generation. The earbuds also feature two microphones and a voice detection accelerometer, customizable tap controls, a VIP filter and multipoint pairing.

Image Credits: Amazon

The prevailing Echo Auto for vehicles can be now being made available to customers in Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

Image Credits: Amazon

As for Alexa, Amazon previously shared a few of its thoughts about its smart assistant’s future during last month’s first-quarter earnings call with investors. Here, CEO Andy Jassy spoke of the corporate’s work to construct a more “generalized and capable” large language model (LLM) to power Alexa and said the brand new LLM would help Amazon work toward its goal of constructing the perfect personal assistant — not only a sensible speaker.

Already, a lot of Alexa’s experiences have been powered by a big 20 billion-parameter language model with encoder-decoder architecture, which it says is the most important encoder-decoder model ever built. And with the introduction of Transformer-based large-scale multilingual models, the Alexa Teacher Model (or AlexaTM because it’s called) can transfer what it knows to a different language without human supervision, helping Alexa get smarter, faster. The model can be utilized in conversational skills like Create with Alexa, where kids and Alexa provide you with stories together.

Still, despite these AI advances, most customers are still using their Echo devices for basic tasks, like controlling their smart home or getting updates about their Amazon orders. Though sales of Alexa-enabled devices have now topped 500 million, they haven’t helped Amazon sell more merchandise, reports found. But Prasad says Alexa usage remains to be growing, with Alexa interactions up 35% year-over-year. People using the assistant to get information is up by greater than 50% year-over-year, he notes.

As for what comes next, the exec only offers the broadest of hints.

The goal, he says, is for Alexa to supply higher answers, but in addition those which can be grounded in facts — a concern with modern AI. Plus, Alexa’s answers must be personalized to the top user. For instance, should you told Alexa you felt hot, it should offer to show your thermostat down, not suggest you go to the beach to chill off.

“We have already got announced the Bedrock service which is for enterprise use cases,” Prasad says, referring to AWS’ latest tools for constructing with generative AI. “After which, for Alexa — for the patron use cases, like powering all of the conversational experiences on Alexa — you’ll find qualitatively different elements of experiences that we’ll be launching along the yr,” he teases.

46 COMMENTS

  1. … [Trackback]

    […] Find More Informations here: bardai.ai/artificial-intelligence/amazon-refreshes-its-echo-lineup-adds-a-wi-fi-extender-and-smart-speaker-combo-echo-pop/ […]

  2. … [Trackback]

    […] Read More Info here on that Topic: bardai.ai/artificial-intelligence/amazon-refreshes-its-echo-lineup-adds-a-wi-fi-extender-and-smart-speaker-combo-echo-pop/ […]

  3. Hello! Do you know if they make any plugins to safeguard against
    hackers? I’m kinda paranoid about losing everything I’ve worked hard on. Any
    suggestions?

  4. Afteг I initially left a comment I аppear to have clicked tһe -Notify me when neew commеnts are added- checkboⲭ and
    from now on each time a ⅽomment is adⅾed I receive foujr emails with thе exact ѕsame
    comment. There has to Ьe an easy method you can remove
    me from that sеrvicе? Ⲕudos!

  5. Having read this I thought it was very enlightening.

    I appreciate you finding the time and energy to put this informative
    article together. I once again find myself personally spending a lot of time both reading and posting comments.
    But so what, it was still worthwhile!

  6. Great post. I was checking continuously this blog and I’m impressed!
    Extremely useful information specifically the
    last part 🙂 I care for such info much. I was seeking this certain information for a very long
    time. Thank you and best of luck.

  7. I like the helpful information you supply to
    your articles. I’ll bookmark your weblog and test again here frequently.
    I’m slightly sure I will be informed many new stuff
    right here! Best of luck for the following!

  8. After looking over a handful of the articles on your web page, I
    honestly like your technique of writing a blog.

    I book marked it to my bookmark website list and will be checking back in the near
    future. Please visit my web site too and let me know your
    opinion.

  9. Great beat ! I would like to apprentice while you amend your site, how could i subscribe for a blog website? The account helped me a acceptable deal. I had been a little bit acquainted of this your broadcast offered bright clear concept|

  10. Hi! I could have sworn I’ve been to this website before but after checking through
    some of the post I realized it’s new to me.
    Anyhow, I’m definitely delighted I found it
    and I’ll be bookmarking and checking back frequently!

  11. Howdy I am so thrilled I found your website, I really found you by mistake, while I was browsing on Bing for something else, Anyhow I am here now and would just like to say thanks for a remarkable post and a
    all round enjoyable blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t
    have time to read it all at the moment but I have
    bookmarked it and also added your RSS feeds, so when I have time
    I will be back to read a lot more, Please do keep up the awesome job.

  12. Incredible! This blog looks just like my old
    one! It’s on a totally different subject but it has pretty much the same page layout and design. Excellent choice of
    colors!

  13. Hello! I’m at work surfing around your blog from my new iphone 3gs!
    Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your
    posts! Carry on the superb work!

  14. Everything composed made a ton of sense. However,
    consider this, suppose you added a little information? I mean, I don’t wish to tell you how to run your blog, however what if you added a title that makes people desire
    more? I mean Amazon refreshes its Echo lineup, adds a Wi-Fi extender and smart speaker combo, Echo Pop – BARD AI is kinda vanilla.
    You should look at Yahoo’s front page and see how they
    create news titles to get viewers to click. You
    might add a video or a related pic or two to get readers excited about what you’ve got to say.
    In my opinion, it would bring your posts a little bit more interesting.

  15. I will immediately grab your rss feed as I can’t find your e-mail subscription hyperlink or e-newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Kindly permit me recognize so that I may just subscribe. Thanks.|

  16. The other day, while I was at work, my cousin stole my iPad
    and tested to see if it can survive a thirty foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation.
    My iPad is now broken and she has 83 views. I know this is totally off topic but I had to share it with someone!

  17. Hello there! This post could not be written any better!
    Reading this post reminds me of my old room mate! He always kept
    talking about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read.
    Thanks for sharing!

  18. Hi! I simply want to offer you a big thumbs up for
    the excellent information you’ve got here on this post.
    I am returning to your website for more soon.

  19. Oh my goodness! Impressive article dude! Thank you so much, However
    I am going through problems with your RSS. I don’t know why I cannot
    join it. Is there anybody else getting identical RSS issues?
    Anybody who knows the answer will you kindly respond?
    Thanks!!

  20. I don’t even know how I stopped up here, but I assumed this put
    up used to be great. I do not recognize who you’re but definitely you’re
    going to a well-known blogger in case you are not already.
    Cheers!

  21. Have you ever considered publishing an e-book or guest authoring on other websites?
    I have a blog based on the same ideas you discuss and would love to have you
    share some stories/information. I know my subscribers would value your work.
    If you are even remotely interested, feel free to send me an email.

Leave a Reply to jarisakti Cancel reply

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here