Panos Panay didn’t look like he was under intense pressure Tuesday morning. Or maybe he’s just good at hiding it.
Panay, a former chief product officer at Microsoft, joined Amazon last October as head of its gadgets and services division, which includes Alexa. As a result, his most pressing task from day one was to help lead the reinvention of the decade-old voice assistant for a new era of generative AI.
But a year later, Panay and other Amazon executives still haven’t released the new Alexa to the public. luck We previously reported that the new Alexa effort, first announced by Panay’s predecessor Dave Limp last September, was plagued by both internal structural and technical hurdles. According to multiple reports, Amazon will finally announce it this fall.
But instead of a big AI announcement, Panos stood in front of a room full of journalists on Tuesday and announced a slate of new devices from a product line that Amazon feels comfortable with: the Kindle. He revealed a total of four Kindles. Prices range from $109.99 for the newest Original Kindle to $399.99 for the newest Kindle Scribe, currently available on Matcha. He also unveiled the family’s first color e-reader called Kindle Colorsoft. It is available for pre-order and costs $279.99.
While the humble Kindle e-reader may not look as appealing to techies as the AI-powered Alexa of the future, Panos occasionally gets personally enamored with the team’s new creations. During his approximately 40-minute lecture, he frequently used the adjective “romantic.”
Regarding the size of the original Kindle, he says: “Perhaps the most romantic thing about this product is that you can put it in your pocket.”
The video introducing Colorsoft was also “romantic”. So too was the “very romantic” setting for the press event, a salon-style space on the eighth floor of New York City’s Shedd Arts Center, flooded with natural light thanks to high glass ceilings.
Regardless of whether some of Panay’s emotions are more performance-driven than natural, the reason why it wasn’t a typical Amazonian thing, and perhaps where it could use some activation It was refreshing both because that’s the point of it and because it happened at a press conference. There was little enthusiasm for AI in the current industry.
In fact, the only mention of AI came when Panay discussed the new Kindle Scribe. This Kindle Scribe is powered by artificial intelligence that works in the background to summarize your notes and make your writing easier to read or cleaner depending on your wishes. Panay later said: luck He says he and his team narrowed down a list of more than 50 AI-powered feature ideas to this final combination.
“The point of generational AI is not to have generational AI,” he said in a brief interview after the presentation. “The important thing is to make it useful.”
That’s the dilemma Panay and the team working on the new AI-powered Alexa have been facing since at least the last year. It’s about how Gen AI can be used to reimagine and reimagine the company’s decade-old voice assistant in a truly relevant way. Is it differentiated and convenient?
While tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity AI have captured the hearts of technologists and consumers around the world, Alexa has stood still, at least publicly. These other tools provide utility but may lack emotional connection. Whether that’s what the majority of humanity wants from artificial beings remains to be seen, but Amazon, Alexa, and Panay still have a chance.
I was curious what Panay thought of the idea. He had just spent a considerable amount of time demonstrating to reporters the emotional impact of the Kindle’s features, such as faster page turns and the appropriate vibration of the digital pen against the Kindle’s screen.
Should we expect the new Alexa to elicit such personal responses from him and others, too, especially when recent versions of voice assistants have sometimes veered into desperate nothingness?
“I mean, you’re definitely going to hear me talk about emotions,” Panay said. luck We only discuss future Alexa releases. “And connection. People have an interesting relationship with Alexa. Hundreds of millions of people do right now. So we need to get that right.”
“The products that are coming are very impressive,” he added.
Are you a current or former Amazon employee and have thoughts or tips to share on this topic? Contact Jason Del Rey. jason.delrey@fortune.com, jasondelrey@protonmail.comor through the secure messaging app Signal. 917-655-4267. You can also send him a message on LinkedIn or in @delray above ×.
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