Hello, and welcome to TechRadar’s live report from Amazon’s big devices event. Our US Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff is at Amazon’s HQ to hear in person whatever secrets Amazon has for us, while the rest of the TechRadar team is following a live broadcast.
What will we see? There’s hasn’t really been any hint, but one might venture that an update to the best Amazon Echo speakers is on the way, perhaps a new contender for our list of the best Kindles, and maybe some new Amazon Fire TV hardware. All that is probably alongside more from Amazon-owned companies such as Ring and Blink. And Amazon usually has some weird surprises at these events, such as an Alexa robot or a Ring security camera drone.
In any case, we’ll bring you all the information right here as it happens!
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This is where the magic will happen, starting in 10 minutes. This event isn’t available to stream publicly, so you’ll need to follow along here for all the hot gossip from our man on the ground.
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Speaking of our man, here he is. Lance was at Apple HQ last week, spent all the intervening time writing our iPhone 15 review and iPhone 15 Pro Max review, and has now zipped off to get his hands on Amazon’s latest stuff. The man is indefatigable when it comes to tech.
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What odds do you put on Amazon Astro making a return here, folks? Maybe finally going on sale? Or what if there’s a smarter and more advanced Astro 2? Does that mean the adorable original is left on the smart home scrapheap, perhaps to star in his own Wall•E-like adventure of redemption? We can only assume.
The event is starting! With kids asking an Echo Dot for Baby Shark, and dogs pressing a Ring doorbell. Classic tech event stuff.
Oh, I just saw a cat interacting with Amazon Astro! It’s here in spirit, at least.
Amazon’s Dave Limp is now on-stage, starting us off.
AI has already been mentioned, drink! Bet we’ll hear a lot about a smart Alexa today.
With generative AI, a “superhuman assistant” is “within reach”, says Limp. A billion devices have connected to Alexa in the last decade, with tens of millions of uses per hour.
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All-new Echo Show 8 is redesigned with edge-to-edge glass. A new central camera position, and improved noise-cancelling tech for what it picks up in the home when you’re talking to it.
There’s a big speaker on the back, with two drivers and a hefty radiator, with spatial audio processing and auto-tuning for your room.
The screen now detects how close you are to it, changing what’s shown based on your distance. Simple and easy-to-see information from across the room, with more detailed info appearing when you’re closer and can make out more.
New local language processing is 40% faster, apparently.
Echo Show 8 will be $149, available to order today, shipping “next month”.
Here’s our look at a generative-based Alexa.
Five foundational capabilities were developed for Amazon’s new AI model.
Conversational – it needs to be fast to respond when it’s voice-based rather than text, and it knows whether you’re still around so it’s not talking to nothing.
Real-world applications – it needs to understand the devices you have, how they work, and how they affect your actual home.
Personalization – Recommendations, personal reminders, grocery needs, and some personality. “Alexa will have opinions” and “dad jokes”.
Trust – “We believe there is no trade-off between trust and performance”. Amazon says it’ll give you information and control to protect your privacy even with generative AI in the background.
Now we’ll get a look at it in action.
People are asking Alexa for ideas for date nights, or when is a good time to go to Puerto Rico. The responses are very ChatGPT, in that it’s natural language with some specific recommendations, but pretty concise since you clearly don’t want to listen for ages.
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Ooh, a live demo! Very brave.
Saying “Alexa, let’s chat” enables the more advanced conversational mode. The response is pretty quick – though it’s not always able to pick up Dave’s voice in the big event room.
He asked how his “favorite” football team is doing, and Alexa new which team it was, and rapidly gave him some info.
The little bits of “personality” that are being injected are pretty basic and dystopian, but the way he’s having a back-and-forth conversation, asking for information like how well a particular player did in a game, is impressive.
All the information comes with a nice display on the screen to back it up. He’s now asking it to create an invitation for his event that he can send to friends, and it automatically included a promise of making the recipe he looked up, which is smart.
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We’re getting some background tech info now, including that Echo Show devices will analyze your voice and head movements to check if it seems like you’re addressing Alexa or someone else, because you don’t need to keep saying Alexa before every line when you’re in “Let’s chat” mode.
Another reference to making dad jokes. Execs: they’re just like us!
Early next year, we’ll get a much more natural-sounding (ie, less robotic) voice for Alexa, that has intonation and emphasis of particular words. They had it talking about how it likes the “emotional intensity” of a Van Gogh painting, which I am not into when it’s in such a natural woman’s voice. But the voice is impressive.
Apparently, it’ll also respond with joy when telling you your team won, and will get a bit more sympathetic when they didn’t.
