that’s about what I’m thinking too. like, the way people seem to use voice assistants (kitchen timers when your hands are dirty, smart device control since smartphones are weirdly bad at it and there’s no other acceptable ambient interface for this, music/wifi audio) doesn’t match at all with how the companies that make them assume they’re being used for the most part, so there’s every chance most people aren’t engaging with the money-making parts of Alexa (namely the constant ads, data-exfiltrating integrations, and of course the ability to order more shit from Amazon with your voice which everyone I know with an Alexa device disabled immediately for obvious reasons)

it’s entirely possible this LLM horseshit is the make or break moment for Alexa — either it somehow turns a better profit, or they finally have an exit from the voice assistant market

I think I recall reading something a while back that said the original plan was to make alexa a kind of platform, like a thing that vendors could deliver apps for, but that it completely fell on its arse for some reason (can’t remember now if it was cost or some petty “design choice” fuckup by amazon restricting something, or what). I’ll try find the article later

which comes to mind for me because this choice feels quite a bit like re-attempting keeping that pitch alive while also moving the hard part (and cost centre) elsewhere