Alexa just got an AI upgrade, and if all goes well, it might actually help instead of just reminding you to buy more paper towels.

It's the biggest one since it first launched over a decade ago.

The goal is to make the voice assistant feel less like a clunky chatbot from the past and more like a modern AI powerhouse.

A demo video at the launch event showed Alexa booking concert tickets, making restaurant reservations, and even texting a babysitter, which sounds great in theory.

The presentation showed flowing, smooth conversation, which is a change from the stiff single-question exchanges Alexa users are familiar with.

But pulling off this level of AI integration has been anything but smooth. The revamp, led by former Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay, has been in the works for a while, and Amazon had to push back the launch by about a year to get the software up to par.

Even now, early testers have mixed feelings—some say Alexa still isn’t on ChatGPT’s level, while others think it just talks too much.

Part of the challenge is the unpredictable nature of generative AI.

Unlike classic Alexa, which pulled responses from a pre-set database, this new version is trying to generate answers on the fly—and sometimes, that doesn’t go well.

In internal tests, the shift to AI actually broke some Alexa-powered devices, forcing Amazon to rethink its approach.

Back in the late 2010s, Alexa-powered Echo speakers were the smart home gadget to have, and Amazon went all-in on expanding the ecosystem.

The plan was to turn Alexa into a money-maker by getting people to shop via voice commands.

But that never really took off, and other revenue streams didn’t materialize as expected.

Now, Amazon is betting that AI can give Alexa a second life—but it’s still unclear whether this reboot will be the comeback it’s hoping for.