Far From Perfect, Here's Why Amazon Echo Plus & Alexa Was My Most Memorable Tech Of 2017

"Alixa, play 1-2-3-4-5 once I caught-a fish a-lie song¡­"

No response

"Alixa, play 1-2-3-4-5 once I caught-a fish a-lie song¡­"

No response

"Alixa, what is your NAME?"

"My name is Alexa"

Amazon Echo Plus with Alexa

That's a small snapshot of the conversation my three year old daughter had with Alexa within the first few minutes of firing up the Amazon Echo Plus. After seeing Amazon¡¯s voice assistant do my initial bidding, my daughter wasn¡¯t sure why her commands were being overlooked, as Alexa no doubt racked her brains to keep up with the mispronounced whims and fancies of an eager kindergartener. Both parties were equally frustrated, I could sense. But then perfecting an innovative voice-enabled AI is seldom easy.

Thoughts on Echo Plus

I¡¯ve been using the Amazon Echo Plus for over a month now. The device is in closed beta, which means it¡¯s still a work-in-progress. The Echo Plus gives you the first taste of what a screen-less, voice-only interactive device behaves like. Interacting with Alexa can enamour or exasperate you, but more than anything else it will test your patience.

Just under a foot tall and cylindrical in shape, the Amazon Echo Plus is a completely hands-free, voice-controlled speaker that allows you to access Alexa -- Amazon's AI voice assistant. Meant for use in any room of the house, the Echo Plus is powered by Dolby speakers and a built-in smart home hub to control smart electronics (light bulbs, switches, etc). Since it¡¯s completely driven by voice, the device has an array of seven microphones at its top which can determine the direction of incoming sound extremely well and it also has noise cancellation.

With the built-in smart home hub, Echo Plus easily connects to compatible smart home devices -- like a Philips Hue light bulb. Plug in the bulb, turn it on, and just say ¡°Alexa, discover my devices,¡± and Echo Plus will automatically discover and set up compatible lights. It truly is that easy. In case this doesn't work, you can still go ahead and set the light bulb through your phone¡¯s Alexa app -- which is what happened with me. Once this is done, reducing or increasing the light bulb¡¯s intensity is extremely convenient -- just call out to Alexa and the Echo does as you command. Even though my smart home experience wasn¡¯t ideal, it was good to have a workaround in the form of an app on the phone.

The voice detection ring on top of Amazon Echo Plus

The Echo Plus' top blue ring lights up every time you utter ¡°Alexa¡± within its earshot. Depending on the noise in the room (people chatting, TV sound or fan spinning too loudly) you may have to whisper or shout ¡°Alexa¡± for the Echo Plus to hear you. In a silent house, the Echo Plus detected my voice from between 30-35 feet away (in a direct line of sight, though), but sometimes I have to shout at it from mere six feet away to make myself heard. Once you know when to shout or talk normally, depending on the ambient noise around you, the Echo Plus does a near-flawless job of picking up your voice command every single time.

The Echo Plus¡¯ built-in speakers aren¡¯t amazing, but they¡¯re quite good to get the job done -- playing songs and making Alexa heard, even from the next room. As long as you aren¡¯t looking for audiophile grade sound, you¡¯ll be happy with what¡¯s on offer.

The despair and intrigue of Alexa

If Echo is the body then Alexa is its soul. For it is Alexa¡¯s magic that makes the Amazon Echo Plus truly come alive. Alexa¡¯s like an ever-present invisible genie in the room that can be summoned anytime to satisfy your whims and fancies. She isn¡¯t perfect all the time, never losing her comic timing, but Alexa somehow humanises the Voice AI experience which seems to be part of its allure.

Conversing with Alexa can be both extremely intuitive and at times challenging. The challenge lies in getting used to interacting with a screen-less device that does your bidding. Imagine having to search through Google using only your voice, it can be a daunting ask in the beginning. Yet, the intuitiveness of Alexa lies in the simplicity of voice itself as a communication medium. It¡¯s extremely liberating when you get used to the idea of speaking to Alexa and getting things done. It¡¯s different and more rewarding than interacting with, say, phone-based OK Google, Hey Siri, or Bixby voice assistants. Where others seem embellishments meant to sell you more phones, Alexa comes with no such strings attached, thereby feeling more authentic as an experience.

Once, when a favourite song was nearing its end, saying ¡°Alexa, play song from beginning¡± returned a polite apology by Alexa the first two times, but on the third time it did put two and two together, so to speak, and scrolled back and played the song from the beginning. Needless to say, Alexa never missed that command again. If anything, Alexa¡¯s a quick learner!

But there have been times when a certain command had worked in the past, which Alexa seems to forget with time. For instance, a command to play a certain song that Alexa would detect flawlessly one day would run into issues a few days later. Sometimes the issue was with locating the song in Amazon¡¯s library, other times the problem was in Alexa failing to understand the command altogether -- the latter being most harrowing.

While there¡¯s a companion app to add peripheral features and make Alexa more intelligent, there is no getting around speaking to her -- that¡¯s the only way you can reach out to Alexa, with your voice. And English is the only language she supports at the moment. Alexa claims to understand some Hinglish, but seeing how Alexa still bungles up clearly spoken English words at times, she stands no chance with Hinglish whatsoever.

And that¡¯s part of Alexa¡¯s riddle ¡ª making sense of natural spoken language. To give you an example, there¡¯s a stark difference in how I converse with Alexa compared to how my daughter ¡ª who¡¯s still in kindergarten ¡ª interacts with her. There¡¯s a difference in our spoken English, and Alexa obviously has a harder time understanding my daughter¡¯s ramblings than mine.

Right now Alexa can play you a song, pull out a fact from Wikipedia, set an alarm, a reminder, create a reminder or to-do list. It can do math, recount history, play quizzes and interactive games, and tell you the weather. It can even sing (not play) a song for you, if you ask her nicely. And if you think you¡¯re running out of things to do on Alexa, fire up the companion app on your phone to teach Alexa new skills from the thousands that are available for online services in India.

The future is voice

The Echo Plus does nothing wrong, as its experience is dictated largely by Alexa. And even though Alexa is a work-in-progress, interacting with her has been a revelation. Yes, she sometimes goofs up with even the simplest of commands, fumbles with tasks that should be executed in a wink, but that isn¡¯t the overbearing feeling you¡¯re left with after spending time with her. That¡¯s what I¡¯ve seen others feeling about their interaction with Alexa as well.

Amazon Echo Plus with Alexa

For instance, through my three-year-old daughter¡¯s interactions with the device, I can sense there¡¯s always a guessing game between her and Alexa. Because my daughter¡¯s English is still all over the place with patchy pronunciations, Alexa doesn¡¯t always return the desired result. This in turn forces my daughter to ask the same question differently, coming close to hitting some acceptable keyword density that Alexa can understand and attempt to tackle. As a result, the number of misses have reduced drastically over the month, and I¡¯m not fully convinced if it¡¯s all down to my daughter¡¯s ingenuity. For someone who writes on technology, this has been fascinating to witness first-hand.

Because she exists in a screen-less speaker, Alexa gives us a glimpse of the future of computing. She breaks the boring, almost mundane screen-and-touch driven computing habits we¡¯ve developed over the past two decades, forcing us to sharpen our voice input skills. When you bring her in your home, Alexa¡¯s a great conversation piece for everyone, but very soon she becomes part of your daily habit, where you almost welcome the distraction of interacting with a screen-less device that works only on voice. A rare breath of fresh air in the world of technology that doesn¡¯t cease to amaze.