Photo of Amazon’s annual fall event stage held at it's second HQ (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)We’re here in sunny Arlington, VA for Amazon’s annual fall event. This is the first time the e-commerce giant is holding a press event at its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, which is closer to Washington D.C.
Amazon’s annual events are unpredictable. They’re held every September with introductory remarks from Dave Limp, Amazon’s SVP of devices and service, followed by a procession of product announcements leading up to the unveiling of a new lineup of Echo speakers and other products.
But one thing could be different this time: Limp, Amazon’s hardware boss, plans to retire in the coming months. Limp is leaving the company after 13 years but he will likely be present at the event.
While the focus of this year’s event is first and foremost on a new lineup of Echo speakers, Amazon is known for surprising audiences with wacky products. The big question this year, however, is going to be about the future of Alexa’s Amazon’s voice assistant. The voice-based assistant hasn’t seen a significant update in recent years, and the pressure is mounting on Amazon to make Alexa more human-like. Will Amazon show the next-chapter of Alexa powered by generative AI? We will have to wait and see.
The high-octane Amazon event concluded with Dave Limp taking the stage to share his concluding notes on how generative AI is powering the latest products, and Alexa.
Echo Hub is a new wall-mountable smart home hub powered by Alexa. It has an eight-inch touchscreen with a customizable dashboard and supports connectivity standards, including Matter and Thread. It is compatible with over 140,000 smart devices.
Echo Hub is pitched as a centre hub for your smart home that can handle multiple camera streams simultaneously. It is priced at $179.99, less than half of the most popular smart home hubs.
This new mesh Wi-Fi router is Wi-Fi 7 compatible and offers 10 Gigabit Ethernet. It can support up to 200 devices and for large homes, it also comes in a pack of three with a starting price of $599.99.
Amazon introduces a new outdoor camera -- Blink Outdoor 4 Floodlight Camera with support for a battery extension pack. Priced at $159.99 for the camera and $29.99 for battery, this camera is flexible and easy to install.
The new Stick Up Cam Pro now gets 3D motion detection technology and includes Audio+ technology, powered by two array microphones, echo cancellation, and a security siren. All of this for $179.99.
AI Art is coming to Fire TVs and Fire TV 4K Max. Users can give a spin to your pictures using generative AI.
Amazon is fine-tuning Fire TV’s search feature, which is now powered by generative AI. The new voice search feature makes it easy to watch and choose from a selection of recommendations personalized to your Fire TV profile.
Amazon announces its first ever soundbar at $119.99. Backed by Bluetooth, it is compatible with all Fire TV products. The company also announced a new Fire TV Stick 4K, which is 30 per cent more powerful than the previous generation model. It also supports Wi-Fi 6 for seamless 4K content resolution and it can also connect wirelessly to supported Echo devices. Besides, Amazon also introduced Fire TV 4K Max with support for Wi-Fi 6E support, powered by a 2 GHz processor, this is the company's most powerful Fire TV stick yet and it supports HDR, HDR 10 along Dolby Vision for just Rs $59.99.
Amazon announces new kids' tablets with custom designs, including Marvel’s Avengers and Disney Princess Echo Pop variants. The company also announced the new Fire HD 10 Kids for younger kids and the new Fire HD 10 Kids Pro for older ones. Not just design, but these devices will also offer exclusive Amazon Kids content along with enhanced parental control plus a two-year guarantee.
Alexa can’t always understand everyone’s voice, and Amazon is now introducing a new feature called eye gaze on Alexa. This allows users with mobility or speech disabilities to access Alexa using their eyes. This feature will be available for free of cost on the new Fire Max 11 Tablet, starting later this year. There is also a new feature called call translation, which automatically translates calls, again, for free of cost.
Generative AI and ambient experiences are the two big themes that have emerged from Amazon’s fall event. Amazon is going big on generative AI and testing out the potential for LLMs and generative AI tools in its products.
Amazon announces a new no-code solution, powered by its new LLM AI model for developers. It allows developers to create more engaging experiences for their customers without writing a single line of code. Amazon has introduced a new Splash AI feature for Amazon music to enhance customer interactions.
"It’s important we bring our partners along the journey with us. This thinking is in our DNA across Amazon—and it’s why we’ve made our developer tools publicly available for years. Today, over one million brands have used our tools to grow their businesses. We’ll take this same approach as we continue to introduce advanced LLMs," Heather Zorn, Vice President, Alexa.
You don't have to say Alexa again and again to continue the conversation thanks to new Visual ID technology. The new LLM AI model for Alexa offers the same amount of latency as the current model, says Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence and he talks about what makes Alexa sound more natural.
Dave Limp said that Amazon's latest model has been specifically optimised for voice and the things that its customers love, such as access to real-time information, efficient controls for their smart home, and beyond all getting the most of home enterainment.
Alexa will be more conversational, thanks to new AI model. New LLM model will make Alexa more conversational, bring real-world applications, and personalised.Free preview coming to all Echo devices. Devices as old as the first Echo will get the new Alexa, powered by generative AI with ChatGPT-like capabilities.Alexa can write poems, have human-like conversation, and much more. This is Amazon’s answer to Google Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“We've been making progress on our other commitments as well. At the end of last year, we contracted enough renewable energy capacity through new wind and solar farms to equal the expected energy use of Echo, Fire TV, and Ring devices globally in 2025,” said Limp.
The all-new Amazon Echo Show 8 gets a custom speaker system with support for Spatial Audio and it also gets a brand new 8-inch screen with glass protection and a web camera at the front. It supports computer vision-powered adaptive content to show relevant content, depending on the user and it offers 40 per cent faster performance. It also has a lower carbon footprint, which will be showcased on the product page of Amazon with a starting price of $149.99. Will be available for pre-order starting today.
Alexa has been the center of Amazon’s hardware business. Billions of people use devices powered by Alexa.
We're live! Amazon’s hardware chief Dave Limp on stage to talk about everything the company has planned for the world lately! Dave is taking about human-assistant, referring to Alexa. He talks about the recent developments in generative AI.
Amazon’s fall event looks to be a big one. Sure, it will focus on the new Echo lineup and updates to other products like usual, but we're also expecting a few surprises. Of course, the elephant in the room is the make over of Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based voice assistant.
We're 30 minutes out from the start of the event! Meanwhile, it’s time to grab some breakfast snacks and chat up with media friends ahead of the event!
Before we head out for the main event, Amazon is giving us a quick tour of HQ2 at in Arlington. This is a massive campus, and it’s only the phase one of the development. Amazon first announced in late 2018 that Arlington, Virginia, would be home to Amazon’s second headquarters (HQ2) and that would bring more than 25,000 jobs to the region.
The Amazon event begins at 11am ET/8:30 pm IST. We are on the ground to cover Amazon’s fall event at its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Look for plenty of updates in the hours leading up to the kick off.
Amazon took a different approach when it created the Alexa-powered Echo, putting the giant online seller ahead of Google in building a technology that interacts as humans do. But lately, all Big Tech companies are going into generative AI and Amazon cannot afford to lose.