24 hours with Alexa: we cooked, chatted and it kinda lied

It’s been two years since I first heard about the new Alexa. She was announced in 2023. This week, I finally had access to Alexa Plus. I’ve spent the last 24 hours with Amazon’s AI-powered voice assistant. It’s not only an improvement over the original, it’s an entirely different assistant.

Alexa Plus is more intelligent, more capable, and easier to interact with. It can adapt to my requests, even if I ramble or pause. It can also respond based on how I sigh, cough and pause. It’s no longer necessary to say, “I’m sorry, I’m unsure about that.”

Although I was impressed, I found some flaws. Amazon has struggled to reinvent Alexa. Reports of delays and setbacks plagued the project ever since it was announced. Amazon’s slow rollout is another sign that confidence in Alexa Plus isn’t high. The upgraded assistant is still not available, despite the recent expansion (Amazon informed me that it is now in “many million” homes). Early AccessIt’s still a beta, but it will get better.

After spending more time with Alexa Plus and testing all the new features that it has been pushing on me since it arrived in my home, I will publish an in-depth review. Here’s my first impressions and how I spent the first 24 hours of my Alexa Plus experience.

Alexa Plus arrived on my Echo devices late in the afternoon, so my first experiment involved having it cook dinner for me.

Alexa read me the recipe for salmon-tacos after I asked for it. Alexa’s responses were more detailed and conversational, but it felt like business as usual.

As it read me the steps on the Show 8 smart screen, it displayed all it was saying as a full-screen chatbot-style interface, rather than displaying a static page with recipe steps and ingredients.

Initially, I was confused by not being able to see the recipe. I couldn’t follow the instructions as fast as Alexa. Then I realized I didn’t have to keep returning to the screen and scrolling through the recipe like I used to do. Alexa could read out the information as I needed.

I asked, standing in front the spice cabinet: “Which spices will I need for seasoning?” “How do I make sauce?” I asked, as I moved about the kitchen gathering ingredients. Alexa responded with information from the relevant sections. Alexa gave me the correct time to cook the salmon when I asked “How long should I cook the salmon?” I then said “Set a Timer for That” and it did.

This is a vast improvement over cooking with the older Alexa, who couldn’t respond to me on the fly. It also likes to close the recipe in the middle of the cooking process, and then pretend that it has never heard of the recipe when I ask her to show it again. But the new experience was not perfect. At one point I asked how much sourcream I needed. The recipe said “I’m sorry, but the amount of sourcream for the white sauce I have is not specific.” It was right in the ingredients list. It then told me one cup was probably fine, as though it were guessing, despite the fact that that is what the recipe said.

Alexa has also lost the recipe a couple of times when I haven’t spoken to her for a few moments. Alexa usually returns the recipe after a quick “Alexa, could you show me this salmon tacos recipe?” It once forgot what it was doing, and tried to fool me by saying that we hadn’t talked about salmon tacos. Some things don’t seem to change.

I walked in the kitchen and asked Alexa for a cup of coffee. This normally triggers a Alexa Routine that I created which turns on the Bosch coffee maker starts making a coffee grande. Bosch lets you choose specific coffee styles through its Alexa skill. This time Alexa said “I’m so sorry, but I can’t actually make coffee for you. Is there anything else you’d prefer me to do?

Here, the friction between Alexa’s old command and control structure versus the new generative-AI Alexa method of listening to my words and “deciding” what to do became apparent. Alexa could not understand that I wanted to have it run a smart home routine rather than do something for myself.

Amazon’s voice assistant isn’t the first company to struggle with integrating its old functions and its new generative AI abilities. This is why we haven’t seen a more intelligent Siri in our HomePods, or any major Gemini upgrades to Google Home outside of its beta program.

I rephrased, saying, “Alexa, can you run my ‘make me a coffee’ routine?” It asked me which of my two coffee routines I wanted to run. I picked the one I wanted, and this time it ran.

For my second cup, I tried a different tactic. Instead of using a routine, I just asked it to tap into the capabilities of the connected appliance: “Alexa, can you ask my coffee machine to make me a coffee grande?” It worked.

This last action is a big change and one that should make using smart home gadgets much easier. When the new Alexa was first announced, then-Alexa chief Dave Limp told me it would be capable of disambiguating controls for smart gadgets; know what they’re capable of and use those tools when you ask for them without you having to do any setup. My first impressions here are promising, but I’ll be doing a lot more testing.

I tested Alexa’s conversational skills as I sat with my coffee and granola. I wanted to discuss the most important thing in the world at the moment: Wimbledon. Kevin Nguyen, features editor at Verge was not available to help me. My family is also bored by tennis. So I asked Alexa how the tournament was progressing.

Alexa gave me the lowdown about the championships and who was playing today. She also told me some interesting facts, such as how historic it would be if Alcaraz won on Sunday. I then asked her for the score of the match currently being played.

I was disappointed that I didn’t receive the exact game / set breakdown, but Alexa did tell me accurately that the first women’s semi-final had a score of zero sets each. It then launched the app for the Echo Show 21 (which includes FireTV software) that I was using to show me the match. I had to tune into ESPN myself. Alexa, you did a great job.

Our family camping trip is planned for later in the month to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so I asked Alexa about day trip ideas while I was making my lunch. Gatlinburg was the final destination after some back and forth. It suggested Ripley’s Aquarium, which we will definitely visit, as well as Dollywood, which was already in our itinerary.

When I asked Alexa if there were any Dollywood ticket deals, she excitedly informed me about a deal where I could buy a two-day Dollywood ticket for only $42 per day. I asked Alexa to help me book them, and it gave me a link along with some generic tips on how to buy tickets and check out.

To open the chat, I pulled out my smartphone — you can continue any chat that you started on an Echo device through the Alexa app and soon via the web — and navigated the Dollywood website. Once I got to the Dollywood website, I discovered that Alexa’s pricing information was incorrect. I would pay $122, not $84 for a 2-day ticket. Bad Alexa. Chatbots providing incorrect information is not a new phenomenon. Amazon admits that Alexa Plus’s inability to provide accurate, real-time data is a “known limit”. A voice in your house confidently telling something that is not true hits you a little harder than an automated chatbot lying in a text box on your phone or PC, where you can quickly check the facts with a Google Search.

I decided to test a feature that I was excited about: creating a smart-home routine by voice. Over the years, I’ve created many, many Alexa routines. It’s a time-consuming, fiddly process that often goes awry. Alexa’s ability to understand my needs and then provide the necessary details is appealing.

To begin with, I chose something simple. I told Alexa that I wanted the lights dimmed in the kitchen and living room to 60 percent and to play relaxing music on the Echo Studio. I also wanted the thermostat set to 76 degrees. I said that I wanted it to happen every evening at 6PM but also wanted to trigger the routine with my voice any time.

We spent a few minutes back and forth and ended up with two different routines. One that runs every evening at 6pm and another that I can activate with a voice command any time I want. (Alexa Routines are limited to one trigger per routine, so we needed two). Alexa offered to test out the routine. It worked and ran as planned. Good Alexa.

This feature is a big deal for my family who depend on me to set up their devices. This should make it easier to have our smart home bend to their will.