A view of the Amazon HQ2 Campus in Arlington, VA, where the Amazon Devices and Services event will take place in 2023.
Amazon is constantly looking for new ways to innovate through hardware and software, from Echo devices to new Alexa capabilities. On Wednesday, September 20, the company will hold its annual Devices and Services event at its new headquarters in Arlington, VA. The event is an opportunity to unveil new products and improvements made to its platforms.
Also: Amazon’s Echo Show 5 made me a smart display believer (and my daughter, too)
Last year, we saw the launch of the Kindle Scribe, a new generation of Echo Dot and Fire TV Cube, the addition of spatial audio to the Echo Studio, a Fire TV Pro Remote, and the eero built-in capability added to some Echo devices. Though we can’t say for certain what is on the docket this year, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what could be.
Google Assistant is getting a generative AI boost, so why not Alexa? Voice assistants like Amazon Alexa use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as a basis for becoming natural language-processing platforms. This approach allows them to respond to your questions, follow commands, and perform tasks in a conversational way, as if you were talking to another person.
But these systems are different to generative AI. If you ask Alexa a question about something, it’ll likely begin its answer with something like “According to an Alexa Answers contributor…”. This difference is because Alexa can access information online and parrot it to you, but cannot generate those answers.
Also: 4 ways to increase the usability of AI, according to industry experts
Adding generative AI capabilities to Alexa would allow the virtual assistant to create answers for you instead of looking them up online. It’s an approach that would also enable Alexa to answer multiple questions at once and provide customized ideas, such as a recipe with the items you have in your fridge.
Though we can’t say for sure whether Amazon will announce a generative AI superpower for Alexa during its Devices and Services event, the company has hinted at the possibility.
“Generative AI is something we’ve been working on for a while, and it has huge potential — especially in the home,” Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, told Axios this summer. “The opportunity to bring generative AI to customers at that scale is incredibly exciting. But we also know we need to hold a high bar as we build new features and experiences.”
Amazon launched the 5th-generation Echo Dot in 2022, and upgraded the Echo Studio to give it spatial audio capabilities, but the company didn’t make any announcements about its Echo speaker last year, which was released in 2020.
The smart speaker market has been a busy place, and Amazon even launched a compact Echo Pop speaker in 2023. But the Amazon Echo has a spot in the smart home market that the Echo Dot and Pop don’t have, since it also doubles as a Zigbee hub.
Also: Smart home starter pack: 5 devices that will make your life easier
Echo is also a middleground option between an Echo Dot and an Echo Studio, with the $100 price tag to match. However, the Echo’s sound isn’t on par with other $100 smart speakers on the market, such as the HomePod mini, indicating that an update is overdue.
Amazon could also shift strategies to phase out the Echo, and instead keep the more affordable Echo Dot as its workhorse and the Echo Studio as its flagship.
Amazon updates Fire TV Sticks every two years, and the Fire TV Stick 4K is due for a refresh in 2023, as it was launched in 2021.
The Fire TV Stick 4K has also seen deep discounts intermittently this year, with its price dropping lower and more often than it did in 2022. In the past, this trend has been an indication that Amazon is preparing to phase out the product in preparation for a newer model.
Also: The best live TV streaming platforms
Even if we don’t see a new Fire TV Stick 4K during Amazon’s Devices and Services event, it’s likely we’ll see some updates to Fire TVs and FireOS.
Amazon hasn’t updated the Kindle Oasis since 2019, making it the oldest Kindle that Amazon still offers. The age of this device leads to speculation that a new Oasis is on the horizon — or that the device might be discontinued.
The Kindle Oasis features Amazon’s Paperwhite technology, but its ergonomic design and 7-inch display are what make it stand out. It’s one of the thinnest Kindles available and features the second-largest display of the Kindle e-reader lineup, with the first being the Kindle Scribe.
Also: The best e-readers aren’t all Kindle
If Amazon launches a new Kindle Oasis, we can expect the maker to continue featuring a larger screen and an ergonomic design on the back that makes it comfortable to hold for extended periods of time. The Oasis is also the only Kindle with page-turn buttons, a feature many Oasis users love.
However, the company announced a new entry-level Kindle and the Kindle Scribe last year, so the discontinuation of the Oasis could be in store for 2023.
Right now, the company offers an entry-level Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite (which also has a Signature Edition), the Kindle Scribe, and the Kindle Oasis.
As soon as it was launched last year, the Kindle Scribe became one of Amazon’s most popular products. Since then, Amazon has unloaded a barrage of updates to improve the tablet even more, from new brush types, a lasso select tool, export formats, and various PDF-reading improvements.
Also: Amazon Kindle Scribe review: 7 months later, it’s so close to perfect
Though we’re not expecting a new Kindle Scribe in 2023, Amazon is likely to add more new features via updates to existing Scribe devices. We’ll have to wait until the event to learn how these features will alter the user experience.
