Alexa, making recommendations, updating your calendar, updating your documents. And when you get to that point, it really starts to be like, it really, really starts to feel like a natural assistant. I think what AI is doing to connect all our devices is pretty magical. Right now, we've almost been teaching people how to speak to Alexa for 10 years.
It won't be that tough given that toddlers across the world, for instance, know how to get the, you know, how to get to the song they want. If we have a way to help your quick shopping techniques to go get the next level of spice that you needed to finish the meal that you were cooking and you didn't have to take your phone out and you just said it out loud and then 10 minutes later it's at your door.
It's quite powerful. Like that just makes life easier.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Our Own Devices. This time we have a very special guest, one of the biggest names in tech which a lot of us have been following for a long time and we're going to talk again about AI but a lot about devices and how maybe devices are changing with the times of AI. So we have with us the senior vice president of Amazon devices and services, Panos Panay. Sir, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. Grateful.
So, so you know you have been observing and being a very integral part of how devices have changed maybe over the past couple of decades. How do you see this entire AI ecosystem built and do you think it's the hardware part of the AI game is not there yet or are we going to see a big revolution there?
I think we're, it's a great way to start. First off, I think we're at the very early stages. You know, it's easy, there's so much rhythm right now on AI and so much energy. As you know, it's in the news. It's part of everything we're doing. Many people using it in different ways. But to your point or maybe your question, I think we're at the infant stages of it. We're very early, very early, especially with devices. And when you talk about hardware, I think we haven't quite seen the form factors that are yet to come with devices and the opportunities that AI can bring to them. We're starting to, like there's some incredible stuff out there and some of the stuff that we're building at Amazon is awesome, but we're very early. We're very early.
So, how is Amazon looking at this entire ecosystem? You have, you know, started pushing the AI game but do you think the experience is going to change a lot because the Echo devices have a certain history of how they sit in the living room or the bedroom. So how do you bring in AI? You know, you have to think maybe a little bit out of the box here.
Yeah. I think there's a couple of things. The first is like when you think about what Alexa has been, it's been a lot of what I would say command and control.
Meaning I say one thing, I get some, I very, very, very, very specifically say it and I get a pretty specific response and that's just like point and shoot, you know, here's my question, here's my answer. I think we're now moving to kind of a generation of a more fluid experience. It's just conversational. It's more natural. It's not about command and control. It's about what am I thinking? How do I say it? And then how does the product react? It's also changing in the way that it's becoming more proactive in the sense that Alexa Plus hasn't made it to India yet, but when it gets here, you know, the fundamentals of the product understanding you better, holding context, holding memory as the customer chooses, and now all of a sudden you have these interactions that have transformed. They're much different than command and control or point and shoot. And they're really now more natural. Get things done, Alexa, making recommendations, updating your calendar, updating your documents. And when you get to that point, it really starts to be like, it really, really starts to feel like a natural assistant.
So, you know, as you said, it's, you know, with Alexa, it's always been command and control. You know, with AI, you are expecting things to go to an autonomous level at some stage. So, and people have been using Alexa devices for over a decade now. So, there's a lot of muscle memory on how these devices are supposed to work.
So, how are you looking at that? Because, you know, is there going to be a level of discomfort? Hey, what's Alexa up to now? Right.
Yeah. I think what a perfect way to think about it. You know, we've almost been teaching people how to speak to Alexa for 10 years.
You know, and it's, we call it Alexa speak sometimes and you know, it's just its own language. It's very simple. It's short. It's very directive, you know, because maybe not all the time it understands what you're trying to say. So, you have to be very, very particular or very short sentence. How you unteach that is a big challenge. You know, getting somebody to the natural state. But I'll tell you this, Nando, once you discover it, it's priceless. Once you move from, for example, play this song, whatever that song is, to hey, I'm thinking about a song. I heard it last week. Can you help me think about it a little bit more? It sounded something like this. When you get to that level of language, and then Alexa goes, I know what you're looking for. Let me help you. It's quite powerful. But how you get the customer to translate play this song to help me think about what the next song is, is very tricky. Don't get me wrong, it's also extraordinary to be able to say, "Play this song." That's not a simple task. You know, calling the LLM or the AI agent and then the AI agent calling the service and the service playing the music. That's not trivial. However, the complexity that the customer can introduce in just their thinking, like whatever they're thinking about, hey, I watched a movie last week. It had a song in it. What was that song? Alexa can find it now and then play it. It's pretty magical. But how you get the customer to understand that you can get to that natural flow, it's been tricky. But once it's discovered, it becomes fluid. It becomes, you realize, you know, if you just talk to Alexa the way you talk to each other, the way we're talking to each other now, the understanding is extraordinary. The ability for it to respond and kind of know, including, you know, the mood you're bringing to the table. It's pretty exciting.
It won't be that tough given that toddlers across the world, for instance, know how to get the, you know, how to get to the song they want. And it comes almost naturally to them. You know, they don't learn this, right? They see it, maybe their parents play it once and then they hook up with that. Now I've seen with my son 10 years back.
Right. So, you remember that, right? Those are big moments in our lives, by the way. This is like, this is what a product can do for you, like when it, and not to disrupt you, but like it's pretty extraordinary. Like those are moments, but also for your toddler, they're not in a box. They, you know, back 10 years ago, I guess they, you know, I think in the past once the toddler started saying things that were complicated and Alexa didn't understand it, it was hard. But I think in the future, well, you can go any direction.
Yeah. And for sure Alexa will understand it and then answer and get you there.
And you know, Alexa devices have evolved over the years, right? Like now it has a screen, it's maybe in your car, but is AI bringing in an entirely new interface in a way, right? Which is, as you said, it's fluid, right? Like it could be voice, it could be touch, it could be visual. So how are you looking at that? Like is that also a big requirement on the device side that you have to think about the devices very differently from maybe the first generation?
You do, and you almost said it. Like first off, for many people this will be the first ambient AI experience that they have.
Using Alexa and meaning I can just talk and it's there. It's in the room with me. Evolving the UI to have a screen is really important because ultimately it's going to be giving you information that will be very useful to you. That in its sense it'll also dynamically update itself and basically using AI to construct what is it that Nando needs right now, like, and let me put it in front of you. We call this being proactive. There's a lot of moments where Alexa can be proactive trying to determine, hey, what are you thinking you might want to do next? And put some visuals up on the screen that make you think and go, "Oh, I have a question. Good point." Or even as you're having a discussion, it'll bring you images that help enhance the discussion or bring the visual language to you. These are nuances that are really important because when you think about Alexa being that experience, that ambient experience, AI first, and it'll be the first time many users use AI in many ways outside of putting it in a prompt box. You know, when you're just injecting into it like what feels like a search box, this will be that time where the natural conversation comes to full fruition. And then if you're calling on a service and you wanted something delivered to your house and you didn't want to touch it with your hands, it has to be able to dynamically update itself. So it's prompting you to think about what you need next. And I think that's part of the translation of the future of what AI can bring.
Amazon's context with its users and especially on the device side is very different from maybe how all the other tech companies see it. Is that also triggering you to think about your innovation opportunity and possibilities differently? Is that arc going to be different from maybe how a smartphone company is looking at integrating AI into their devices?
