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[Billbofet]

What the hell is going on with Alexa? Lately, it almost always gets my family's requests to set a time, play music, or ask basic questions. It also has a new, perky, annoying-as-hell voice that it randomly uses, but sometimes doesn't?
When it does successfully fulfill a request, it's almost like it's listening now for an additional minute, and will butt in on normal conversations with dumb, useless, unrelated information 60-90 seconds later. It is also giving random, nonsensical, seemingly AI-driven suggestions throughout the day.

I think it's the new Alexa +. For months, it would ask me to opt in to the "new experience," and I held off until it was forced on my units.
I have been a user of Alexa since 2014 and was even in the early access group. Through the years, we have gotten used to using it for setting timers, reminders, streaming and playing music, etc., and it worked flawlessly 99.5% of the time.
Now, it sucks just like everything else to the point we might get rid of it due to it being more annoying than useful. There's no way to go back to the old version either.

Anyone else having the same experience?

** Sorry this is posted in the wrong forum - should be "Off Topic"

 

[Kupfer]

This is gaming discussion

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Enshittification.

Frankly, most questions regarding tech or gaming can be answered with that word alone.

 

[LyricalShrike]

Amazon started laying off the Alexa team in 2023 which led to the products decline.

 

[TintoConCasera]

suck so much

perky

butt in

it sucks

So uh... how much is one of those Alexas?

 

[Moondoggy]

Don't fool yourself, it's always been Google's Ciri but for Amazon product placement, for legal reasons they say it's not monitoring your conversations for keywords, but it's not a coincidence that those things you talk about mysteriously start showing up in your "Recommend for You" section.

 

[Hari Seldon]

I thought that I read that Amazon couldn't figure out a way to monetize this and didn't really invest much into it. I know personally as soon as it started to blink and be annoying I tossed the PoS.

 

[poppabk]

Mine work fine and the Alexa+ voice is a lot better than the old one They are shit at telling which one of them is closest to the person talking, but they have always been shit at that.

 

[A.Romero]

Here is your answer: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/devices/amazon-lost-25b-on-alexa-powered-devices/

 

[Rentahamster]

Now?

 

[jshackles]

 

[bender]

Alexa, post a new thread in OT making fun of this thread.

 

[Spukc]

hey alexa ask users on this thread why alexa is bad

 

[Memati187]

Look at this dude's audacity. I wished I had an alexa who sucks so much right now.

 

[onQ123]

What the hell is going on with Alexa? Lately, it almost always gets my family's requests to set a time, play music, or ask basic questions. It also has a new, perky, annoying-as-hell voice that it randomly uses, but sometimes doesn't?
When it does successfully fulfill a request, it's almost like it's listening now for an additional minute, and will butt in on normal conversations with dumb, useless, unrelated information 60-90 seconds later. It is also giving random, nonsensical, seemingly AI-driven suggestions throughout the day.

I think it's the new Alexa +. For months, it would ask me to opt in to the "new experience," and I held off until it was forced on my units.
I have been a user of Alexa since 2014 and was even in the early access group. Through the years, we have gotten used to using it for setting timers, reminders, streaming and playing music, etc., and it worked flawlessly 99.5% of the time.
Now, it sucks just like everything else to the point we might get rid of it due to it being more annoying than useful. There's no way to go back to the old version either.

Anyone else having the same experience?

** Sorry this is posted in the wrong forum - should be "Off Topic"

You can change the voice

 

[Kilau]

This is gaming discussion

Well you can play Skyrim on Alexa.

Skyrim Very Special Edition

Skyrim Very Special Edition

www.amazon.com

 

[onQ123]

This is gaming discussion

You can play games on Echo devices (Quiz games)

 

[Durin]

Eh, I've pretty much given up on Alexa at this point beyond just using the existing one I have for now.

Really just waiting for Nabu Casa to release a more complete version of their Home Assistant Preview Edition speaker [website]:

Basically a self-hosted version of Alexa, so instead of tying yourself to Amazon's cloud that they're more than likely going to enshittify over time while finding more ways to charge. This speaker is connects to any Home Assistant server, Mini-NUC PC, or Rasberry Pi over wi-fi, and you can use it to control smart lights, set reminders/alarms, check weather, etc.