Leaked: Amazon held talks with Instacart, Uber, Ticketmaster, and others for help on its new AI-powered Alexa
Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa upgrade could launch with several major partners handling specific tasks such as ride-hailing, grocery shopping, and restaurant reservations, B-17 has learned.
The companies under consideration are Uber for ride-hailing, Ticketmaster for ticketing, Vagaro for local business booking, OpenTable for restaurant reservations, Grubhub for food ordering, Instacart for grocery shopping, Fodors for travel advice, and Thumbtack for home services, according to an internal document obtained by B-17.
As of late August, those partner companies were “confirmed” to work with Amazon on this project and some of them were already being tested on the new Alexa’s technology, the document stated. Amazon hopes to onboard a total of roughly 200 partners by the third year of launching the new Alexa and a paid subscription service for it, the document added.
The partner companies would become the primary option for handling those specific tasks on the upgraded Alexa. These would be separate from existing Alexa Skills, which are third-party applications on the voice platform, according to the document. As with any partnership talks, such negotiations could end without final agreements being signed.
Amazon is revamping Alexa with ChatGPT-like AI features, B-17 first reported in January. Internally codenamed Banyan or Remarkable Alexa, the upgrade has the potential to significantly improve the voice assistant with AI features. However, issues like latency and inaccuracy have hampered the project’s early progress.
In an email to B-17, Amazon’s spokesperson said that, as with any product development process, a lot of ideas are discussed and debated, but “they don’t necessarily reflect what the experience will be when we roll it out for our customers.”
“Our vision for Alexa is to build the world’s best personal assistant. Generative AI offers a huge opportunity to make Alexa even better for our customers, and we are working hard to enable even more proactive and capable assistance on the over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices already in homes around the world. We are excited about what we’re building and look forward to delivering it for our customers,” the spokesperson added.
Spokespeople for Uber, Ticketmaster, Vagaro, OpenTable, Grubhub, Instacart, Fodors, and Thumbtack didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Re-architecting “the brains of Alexa”
Potential integrations with these partner companies are important for Amazon because completing entire tasks for users is a key part of the new Alexa’s value proposition. An internal product description, obtained by B-17, paints a picture of an advanced AI assistant capable of handling many types of user inquiries through multiple channels, not just voice.
Amazon hopes the AI update will reignite interest in Alexa. The company has significantly cut back on Alexa in recent years, after the voice-assistant failed to establish a profitable business model. Some Amazon employees previously told B-17 that many inside the company believe Alexa’s future hangs on the success of this new AI-infused assistant.
For now, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy appears to be supportive. During last month’s call with analysts, Jassy said the company is re-architecting “the brains of Alexa” to create “the world’s best personal assistant.”
“The next generation of these assistants and the generative AI applications will be better at not just answering questions and summarizing indexing and aggregating data, but also taking actions,” Jassy said. “And you can imagine us being pretty good at that with Alexa.”
