2 years back when I bought a house, I changed all switches to smart switches, bought smart devices and did some extensive automations. Between Google and #Amazon Alexa, I chose Alexa (partly because of Cortana's potential integration at that time) and now have an echo show and a bunch of echo dot devices strategically placed throughout the house. Initially, things were good, and I had a well-functioning automated home. Over the last year, things have gradually started turning bad to worse. Alexa has stopped recognizing my family's voice even for simple commands like turning on light so much so that all we use Alexa for is to setup timers (even that is a hit and miss). It appears accent recognition in Alexa is a widespread problem. https://medium.com/swlh/alexas-struggle-with-accents-6bc10da58dd0. Recently, my Alexa routines (automations) started vanishing at random and I am having to set things up again. On the other hand, the #Google on our phones have no issues understanding us from far away (I have observed the same experience on my neighbor's Google home devices). I am at the verge of giving up trying to see how to trade in the Alexa devices for Google devices. Are others using Alexa seeing the same issues? Is the issue with accents an outliner? In the context of Blind, I have been reading about the issues and culture in Alexa org and was wondering if it is finally taking a toll on the #Alexa ecosystem?
First world problems 🙄
Ha ha, true. My younger self 5 years back would have looked at this post and made the same comment! :D
Well then op You must be going younger
People have gotten their rewards for initial Alexa success. Future growth is limited, smart people are moving to better more interesting projects
I was in Alexa, glad I left. Amazon is a shit show and Alexa is the star attraction. No long term thinking, short term gains prioritized because PM’s promo depends on it.
How’s it going at Roku? I’ve heard mixed things
Going well. I was a bit concerned before I joined too.
+1. We literally have to shout at Alexa in the morning to turn off the alarm. Alexa wake us up. And we wake up our neighbors. I blame Alexa for my cranky behavior at stand ups.
My son was trying to tell Alexa to shut off my music and his voice doesn’t register so it works out for me. But yeah the product is only slightly better than Siri, which is complete trash.
Alexa is shit I work in Alexa
I also see the same thing. Wakeword recognition gets worse and worse. One practically has to shout to get recognition these days by the device. It frequently misunderstands things. Smart home is especially bad. You tell it to turn the light on, it remains off, you tells it to turn light off, it remains on... if alexa has any smarts it should know that the light is already off, why off someone tell you to turk it off again? Sheez talk about dumb... Not to mention that if you have house hold accounts, you have to set up all your smart home and routines TWICE... its just super lame. I have reverted to using mobile app to do things again. Voice computer is just a gimmick, it can't stand on its own the way things are at the moment, and the fluff amazon and Google put around things don't work that well and falls apart pretty quickly
This post is interesting because just a few days ago I was arguing with someone on Blind who was insisting that Assistant could not catch up to Alexa after all these years
Please let that person know that I will sell them all my Alexa devices at 25%of msrp.
Fwiw Google isn’t getting better. Arguably it’s getting worse. But overall it’s better than Alexa. Like others said, probably the area is not cool anymore, so most folks have moved on, and the rest are adding mediocre improvements and breaking existing features.
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I’ve seen this too. Thinking of switching over to Google ecosystem