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Devindra: [00:00:00] What’s up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I’m Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.
Cherlynn: I’m Managing Editor Cherlynn Low.
Devindra: This week, it’s the iPhone 16e, which Cherlynn has reviewed. We’re going to get her full thoughts on that thing. And also, Amazon held an AI event this week. We expected a lot of devices, but they spent 75 minutes talking about Alexa plus, which is the AI powered Alexa.
You know, that they,
Cherlynn: we expected a lot of devices. We have one.
Devindra: I expected one device, maybe
Cherlynn: one, at least one it’s been a while.
Devindra: Mr. Panos Panay was there, the father of the service and no devices, just him talking about AI. So that’s weird.
Cherlynn: Oh, and stay tuned at the end of this episode. Uh, I, we included an interview that I did with, um, the vice president of Alexa to talk more about the new Alexa plus.
Devindra: Anyway, folks, if you’re enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice, leave us a review on iTunes and drop us an email at podcast@engadget.com. You can also join us on our live [00:01:00] stream on Thursday mornings, typically around 11 a. m. Eastern. Um, you’ll see our faces.
Sometimes we’ll do Q& A and show off devices as well. This week, uh, Sherilyn has the iPhone 16e, which is the least, um, impressive thing to show off. It’s just like, Hey, you have an iPhone from 10 years ago, five, a while ago,
Cherlynn: when, when
Devindra: last, was there a single camera back iPhone?
Cherlynn: Oh God, before that was 11. I think so.
Devindra: Yeah. Like a while ago. So, you know, it’s like a flashback. All right. So let’s talk about this thing, Sherlynn. And I checked out your review. First of all, you gave it a really, um, I think serviceable score. Like you’re saying 77 out of 100. Your title is what’s your acceptable compromise. And really when we were talking about it last week, it really was like compromise seemed like the key word.
The thing we kept coming back to was like just one camera, no mag safe, no fast wireless charging. What are your overall thoughts on this thing?
Cherlynn: I mean, so that headline is like all thanks to our EIC, Aaron [00:02:00]Souppouris, because I was like, where, where do I go from here? How do I, so, so he’s right. It is like, instead of what’s in your wallet, it’s like, what are you willing to take out your wallet?
I don’t know. Um, okay. I’ll tell you the story. Okay. So yesterday I was at the Amazon devices and services event where there were no devices and A bunch of other reporters had gathered and we were all like, you know, the, like, review’s going up soon, right? And so we were all talking about our thoughts on the 16E.
Uh, I was with Lisa Eadiccico, who’s now at CNN and Julian Chokkattu from WIRED. And like, they were both going off about their own, like, grievances first. Julian was the first to be like, I can’t stand that there’s no magsafe. And I was like, huh? I almost like, was like, oh, I didn’t really. And then Lisa goes, oh, I didn’t mind that so much, but I can’t stand that there’s no dynamic island.
And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I pointed out that I didn’t care about either of those, but I care that there’s only one camera because there’s so many. So all three of us had different things we couldn’t.
Devindra: I mean, you’re all power reviewers, right? We are. Um,
Cherlynn: but we, so, [00:03:00] so I can understand that like a lot of the little, you know, the things that we find to be compromises are very unique to like each person’s use case.
And I think that that’s the thing and that’s why I went with that headline in the end. It is ultimately like you are the one that accepts these compromises. You are the one as a person considering an iPhone that has to decide what’s a, an okay compromise for yourself. Um. And for me, the, the single camera is just, I can’t, I can’t abide, I can’t live with it.
So, um, I, to me, the lack of ultrawide initially was just like, all right, well, I mean, I don’t, you know, maybe I don’t need an ultrawide. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe my parents will need an ultrawide. But I didn’t realize until spending more time with the phone that it’s not just that, right? Like the lack of a second camera or a second, like, source of data for Apple to pull information for photography, computational photography stuff means that a lot of other things are just poorer than what you actually already have out there.
So portrait mode was for me the biggest deal. Um, [00:04:00] there’s also like you can’t do the same photographic styles as you get on the regular iPhone 16s. Uh, there’s just. Yeah, even when it does apply portrait mode, it’s, it’s just less accurate. Um, the sort of where they draw the line as to where to apply the blur is a bit messy because there’s just one camera and it’s doing face detection.
So yeah, look, the, the other intriguing things about the iPhone 16E or like to, to kind of give it a few. You know, here’s your positives. Um, affirmations, I guess it’s like, yeah, it looks like right. And iPhone 16, it doesn’t seem to deviate too far from this year’s lineup. And that’s like for the first time in a long time has an entry level iPhone, like an S E.
Looks so similar or like the gap between the iPhone 16 E to the iPhone 16 is not as far as the iPhone SE 2022 was from the iPhone 13, and that’s a point that like Aaron pointed out [00:05:00]as well. So that closeness to the iPhone 16 lineup is largely, I think. Due to, I mean, what you can’t see is the A18 chip inside, right?
They have the same chip across the entire iPhone 16 lineup, which is kind of bonkers to me. And then there’s also the fact that it looks externally quite similar, unless you open the screen, then you see the notch, and then you see the thicker bezels. And then it’s like, all right. And also like, don’t go look at the rear, right?
The camera is just like a dead giveaway. But otherwise, if you’re just kind of like staring at someone on the train, holding onto the iPhone 16e, it’s not easy to tell which model they have if you’re Not immediately looking at their camera. Um, so yeah, I mean, those are some good things about it, right? The display is an OLED, and like, yes, I know that of all the choices they could have made, an OLED’s not necessary.
Like, for an entry level iPhone, but the, it is very bright. Um, it doesn’t get quite as bright as iPhone 16 or even iPhone 15, but it’s nice. I don’t like that it refreshes only at 60 [00:06:00]Hertz, but it’s just much more vibrant. So
Devindra: does the base iPhone right now still. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The non
Cherlynn: pro phones don’t have ProMotion, which is 120 Hertz or up to 120 Hertz refresh rate.
So, you know, you would need to like shell out quite a lot more money for 120 Hertz refresh rate on an iPhone. Um, and I guess. That’s just what you gotta live with. And also to be fair, it probably impacts battery life in a way that you wouldn’t enjoy anyway, because I feel like the pro phones last about a day.
Yeah.
Devindra: They have variable, like, refresh rates too. So it’s like, it slows down depending on like how fast you’re doing shit. Right. I feel like an LCD that was a higher refresh rate would be an overall better looking experience than just, you know, putting OLED at 60 Hertz, but yeah.
Cherlynn: Yeah, I think that’s like a personal thing.
I like OLED. So like, I like the look of it. I really enjoy. Yeah. Not a fan of the LCDs, honestly, but here’s the thing. Um, when I said battery life, also one of the great things about [00:07:00]the iPhone 16 is its battery life, right? Like I think it does last a lot longer than the iPhone 16. Um, Partly because I don’t know, maybe because it doesn’t get quite as bright, but like partly because it has a bigger battery.
And I think all of us reviewers were kind of hesitant to be like that modem. Is it going to work or not? Cause it’s like very hard to say. Um, I think most of us were supplied with the, like with service for our review units and it was like, And for me, it’s really hard to be like the C1 modem works better than my iPhone 16 pros, like whatever modems in there, because it was AT& T versus T Mobile, right?
It really wasn’t down to the Hardaware. It was down to the fact that my carrier just. doesn’t have as good coverage as AT& T, sad to say. Um, so I can’t tell you, I, I wrote down like, yeah, I did the speed test and fast. com like testing on both phones, but it’s just not. And we can’t just throw
Devindra: over a SIM card anymore because there are no more physical SIM cards in iPhones.
So we used it’s just not,
Cherlynn: I mean, it could support a dual SIM, like I could. [00:08:00]you know, support, like, uh, I could have set up a different SIM card in there to just to really do the, you know, apples to apples testing on an Apple phone. Haha. I get it, but I can’t
Devindra: move it as easily as you used to be able to.
Cherlynn: Yeah.
Yeah. I, it’s like give up my own phone for hours or it’s just not, it wasn’t like super easy to do within the span of like a week that I had the phone. So anyway, it could be due to the C1 modem that battery life was better, but in general, like I just find that the non pro phones. All kind of last longer than the pro phones the pro phones have always on display Which is one thing that I think drains the battery, too And to be clear the 16e 16 or 15 don’t have always on display either So there’s a lot of like little things that you have to consider you’re doing a lot of Specs sheet peeping.
I mean, I think we pointed out last time when we were talking about the iPhone 16 E that like, you know, you don’t have wifi seven, you don’t have a thread, you don’t have ultra wide band. And that’s not just in millimeter wave 5g, but also in like locating things precisely, right? Like when you’re [00:09:00] using find my, and also you don’t have max safe.
Um, 5 Watts as opposed to 15. So there’s a lot of these little things. And depending on the audience, it may or may not matter. I don’t know that my mom will care.
Devindra: Um, For the people who don’t know what they’re missing, basically. Right.
Cherlynn: But then for those people is 5. 99 the price point, right? Like it’s,
Devindra: I don’t, yeah,
Cherlynn: I don’t, I don’t think
Devindra: so.
Like given all the compromises you’re listing, um, This is such a, Apple has put us in a weird spot, right? Because like 599, it is the cheapest iPhone, but used to be, I wrote a whole thing last year is why the base iPhone 16e was actually a pretty good deal, given everything they put in there, and it was cheaper than the pros, and that thing is what, 800?
The base
Cherlynn: iPhone 16?
Devindra: The 16. Yeah. Just the 16. Yeah. Um, and to me that felt like given everything they put in there, it seems good. This one at 600 does not seem like a big enough difference cost wise to like turn [00:10:00]people. Yeah, that’s the main thing. And also I think, so I set up an iPhone 14 plus for my mom.
I was talking about last week and she loves it, but also she really needs that bigger screen. You know, um, even though it’s slightly harder to hold, like it is much easier once you’re dealing with, you know, um, older eyes, basically, you kind of need bigger screens to use these devices correctly without like putting on reading glasses every single time.
And that’s why the plus end up being a good one. So I don’t, I see people saying like, this is a good cheap one for your parents or something. A lot of people may actually find this even too small or harder to use.
Cherlynn: And so, so when you’re considering that, right? Like. You want a big screen on an iPhone, the cheapest one you’re going to get is the 15 I think.
And that one is going to start at the same price No, wait, uh, same price as the iPhone 16, um, smaller one. So, no matter what that decision is, whether you’re going for iPhone 16 16 or 15 plus versus 16 E. The difference is [00:11:00] 200. And if you’re financing your phone over two months, that is like a few dollars a month over 24 months.
Aaron and I were talking this out and Aaron was like, I’m happy to eat two ramen meals instead of like going out every month, just to save that money and make up for it, it’s like, it’s quite easy to do the math here and, and. And go for something better instead of the 16 E, like for me. If you like taking photos at all, don’t do the 16e to yourself.
I mean, again, it’s going to be a huge improvement in quality over the iPhone 11 and up, but even the iPhone 11 onwards has dual cameras.
Devindra: Yeah.
Cherlynn: Quality itself is the same, but versatility is different, you know, so.
Devindra: I mean, I kind of feel that, like, I don’t want to sound like, Hey, just put everything on credit or installment plans, right.
Or deal with your carrier payments. But that is kind of the way costs break down, at least in the U S I’m sure in other countries where you’re not paying, you know, monthly, or if you’re paying like all up front, A lot of people just want to buy their phones out right then. Yeah, this is legitimately cheaper and you’ll feel that in your [00:12:00]pocketbook.
But I also agree that, um, the smartest thing to do is not to give away all your money, right? But also not to pay extra interest on it. So the carrier payment plans are actually pretty good. And if you do, if you throw in an upgrade in there, that’s how they juice you, right? Like, that’s how they get to they’re like, Oh, we’re going to give you 800 in credit for this very, very old phone.
But yeah, the trade is like that credit is useless outside of paying for a phone. But if you care about paying for your phone, then it’s actually pretty useful. So that’s how I ended up getting like the 16, not the 16, the 15 pro max for like, not much because I just traded in an earlier iPhone and you have a good phone for like
Cherlynn: two years.
Yeah. Yeah.
Devindra: Yes. Play the system, folks. Like, play. These carriers want to give you money. They want to tempt you with things. Um, the cheapest path for an iPhone may not necessarily be just the one Apple is selling, but again, also look at the used market. Look at other things. Uh, yeah. I’m surprised you didn’t bring up the iPhone 16 plus, Sherilyn, because that one is [00:13:00]900.
So not much more. Yeah, it’s a bit far out. You’re getting closer to the pro. There. Any other thoughts on the 16? Yeah. Because I just feel like, hey, yes. It’s a cheaper iPhone with a lot of compromises and I just feel like I don’t think we’ll be talking about this phone very much after this week.
Cherlynn: Okay.
Devindra: Yeah.
Cherlynn: So my thoughts on the reviewing the iPhone 16e. Um, and the other things that I really like are that being forced to use a phone that feels like it’s from like, I don’t know, five, at least five years ago, right, made me actually grow to appreciate the features I’ve taken for granted on the 16 pro that I kind of pooh poohed at the start.
Right. So things like dynamic Island, I’m surprised. I’m like, Whoa, I actually liked dynamic Island and, and to Lisa’s point, when she pointed out that she, um, missed it, I’m like, yeah, actually it is. Become, and it’s not the aesthetic of it. It’s not the all screen. It’s the fact that it’s functional. Your live activities sit there.
It makes a big difference. And going back to the notch was like, huh, where’s my waveform for my voice memo? You know, it’s kind of like, Uber timer. Where’s your, [00:14:00]
Devindra: when is your delivery? All that stuff is really Spotify
Cherlynn: controls. All of that stuff. I mean, there is some kind of like some apps still sit at the top nicely, but not in the notch.
And so it’s just kind of weird. Um, the other thing that I’ve found myself missing from the iPhone 16 pro is weirdly camera control, but not in the way you’d expect. So what I like about camera control, having it versus not, is that. It’s a really quick way to launch your camera in a dedicated, like it’s just dedicated shortcut.
You don’t need to think about it. You just press it and it opens. Um, and the 16E has the action button that you can customize to do that. And so I found myself doing that, but the thing is you have to give it up, you know, like whatever, like, for example, I use the 16 pros action button to switch between silent mode and not silent mode and same.
On the 16E, you can’t have both at once, so that’s kind of sad. You can still use the lock screen shortcut, of course, but I don’t want to have to pull out my phone, swipe the screen, and then take a photo. I’m just like, take it out of my pocket and it’s good to [00:15:00]go, you know? So those are the things, like, I learned from my review, not specifically about the 16E, but about these other features Apple has introduced that, like, I wasn’t super impressed by at the start, but, like, now I’m like, oh, they have actually.
I’ve grown used to them in my life and That’s why long term reviews are important. And I would say, stay tuned to our website. We’ll see like more of these long term thoughts.
Devindra: That’s uh, yeah, I think that’s ultimately it. It is, this is, I think for listeners of the show, probably not a phone. A lot of people would be buying.
Ben, for the love of God, do not, um, Yeah, don’t, don’t do it.
Cherlynn: Get the iPhone 15. I think you might enjoy, especially because if you don’t care about Apple intelligence and don’t. You know what all the fuss is about? The 15 is a good phone.
Devindra: 15? So, the 15 Pro, like, honestly, any of those, although it’s only the Pro Max that works with Apple Intelligence because it has the additional RAM.
No, the
Cherlynn: Pro. The Pro alone will get you intelligence, so you’re fine. Just do the 15
Devindra: Pro?
Cherlynn: Okay. Yeah. Oh, okay.
Ben: Yeah, no, I wasn’t aware of that because I [00:16:00] was about to say that reading the Reviews for the 16e convinced me to get a, um, 16 base model or 16 pro, because I read Sherlyn’s review and Julian’s review at Wired back to back, and Julian made The really interesting point of, okay, yes, Apple intelligence going to be in its infancy right now, but if you want continued access to all of the stuff that might be coming in the next like year and a half, two years, two and a half years or so, because I do keep my phone for a while, then it’s a good idea to have something that Like can get that right now Ben for you
Devindra:specifically the voice notes transcription thing That could be useful in addition to other recording you’re doing that’s like instant transcription of an obsession you’re in or something So
Ben: yep, that’s good stuff.
So like if i’m doing um Recordings with like lav mics any of those lav mics that have gotten [00:17:00]really popular in the last couple of years You see tiktokers using them and everything like that You should be able to use Apple intelligence to Transcribe this stuff that you recorded into, you know The sure app or the road app or whatever like that
Devindra: not yet But I think that’ll definitely come anything else you want to add Trillin because we got we get stuff
Cherlynn: I was going to say that the iPhone 15 Pro, just to confirm, it does support Apple Intelligence, so you can consider that.
I mean, like, that’s going to be cheaper than the 16, it’s the same price as the 16, I’m sure. That’s what I’m trying to do right now, is to confirm the iPhone 15 Pro pricing for you. I, I don’t know that Apple still sells the 15 Pro though, so if you can find it, get it, but if you can’t. You
Devindra: know, and after you’re giving up the camera button, if you go for 15 pro and also any potential other, I don’t know, I don’t know if they’re gonna have like lock off points for like what apple intelligence features you get because you’ll have a slightly lower, um, you know, intelligence chip than, uh, I mean, maybe
Cherlynn: in future, right?
[00:18:00] Like if, if we’re thinking the apple intelligence is gonna stick around for five years. Sure.
Ben: Yeah.
Cherlynn: But I mean, yeah. Um, I’m not saying don’t will in
Ben: some capacity.
Cherlynn: Sure. Sure. In, in some way. They might retire the name or something, but they’ll still have the feature of like, yeah, intelligent Siri or whatever.
Devindra: I don’t, I, they’re so dug in, like all these companies are so dug in, they would look ridiculous. So if they’re just like, forget about all that AI stuff that we tried to feed you. It feels they’re stuck with it
Cherlynn: piece from three, five years ago. I can’t, everyone’s, I,
Devindra: no, at least it’s safe. At least these are, don’t think these are features you can touch and feel and they do shit.
Um, but some of them don’t. Some of them just don’t work well, NFTs were just like useless anyway. Let’s move on. Let’s move on. We got other news. Let’s talk about in talking about potentially useless features. Amazon announced, uh, Alexa plus, sorry for people who have echoes nearby, but the AI powered version of its voice assistant that they’ve been talking about for a while.
They announced, I think two years ago, 2023, that they were working on a [00:19:00] better conversational Alexa using generative AI tools. We hadn’t heard anything about it until now. It’s coming. They fully announced it. Uh, there’s no a clear arrival date yet, but it’s gonna be $20 a month on its own or a part of a prime subscription if you already have it.
And that is $15 a month. So clearly they just want you to get prime. That’s the whole point of Amazon these days. Um, it’s gonna be coming to a, you know, these devices with screens first, eventually to any of the devices. And since it’s in the cloud, they’re not doing onboard processing. Um, you don’t have to go buy new devices.
So that’s cool. I think that’s the main good thing here. But what is Alexa Plus, Jolene? Are you intrigued by it?
Cherlynn: Yeah, uh, I wanted to say at the start of this episode, actually, really just to give people a moment to go and mute their echo speakers. So while I waffle on for a little bit, I’m not going to say the A word.
You have some time right now. Walk over to your speaker, mute the microphone. But anyway, it’s impossible to avoid this. I’m not saying this word, this episode at all. So [00:20:00] your, your best bet is to have muted your speaker by this point, if not pause. Okay. So, I mean, we, we knew it was going to be about this, like redesign slash like next gen Alexa, um, for this event, but some of us are still, I guess, hoping for a device because it’s been a long time since there’s been a new echo speaker or a new echo device, new echo buds, new, like.
Like a show I guess. So anyway, attending this event was intriguing. It was fun for me because it was nice to like, see people. Um, I don’t know if y’all read the live blog, but there was a moment where we were like moving from one spot to another and I kind of saw Panos just kind of making his way through the crowd and nobody like knew.
It was looking at it. I was like, Oh, this man is like being treated like an average Joe. And I’m like, this is Panos, excuse me. So I just went, I just like, as I was coming up the stairs, I saw him, Hey Panos. And he turns around and he’s like, Oh, hi. And then he’s like very friendly. He’s like, I was with Lisa as well.
And so like, he was shaking hands with both [00:21:00] of us and he was like, saying nice things. Oh, thank you for your very kind article to me. And then like, he’s talking to Lisa as well. So we’re all just like, all right. I mean, that was, that’s the sort of thing I go, I like, deeply
Devindra: in the eyes, because the thing about making me question
Cherlynn: my life choices,
Devindra: he has those, uh, you know, like when you talk to a mystic or like a magician and they just like stare into your soul a little bit, it’s so funny.
It was very
Cherlynn: like the, and then his portion of the presentation too was funny because, okay, so the nobody. Um, and I was able to see this set up because this was not a live streamed event. You could only see our photos and our live blog. And maybe you saw, you know, social media influencers live streamed it perhaps.
So, but, but to describe it for you, we were all set around the stage and there was this gigantic, Projection of an echo show, which is their like picture frame looking smart display. And there’s a webcam or an actual camera, I’m sure built into where the camera of the echo show would normally be on this gigantic a hundred inch echo show on the wall.
Um, and then, you [00:22:00]know, whatever PS or other people doing demos were doing on a. More like regular size echo show probably 21 on the stage was reflected in real time on that. So at some point, um, during the demo or the presentation, they had Alexa use the webcam on the wall and see if the people. You know, watching panels do his thing, we’re reacting in a certain way.
Right. He was like, Oh, Alexa, like, um, uh, tell me what this 200 group of 250 people look like. And like, um, you know, I’m, I’m nervous, you know, tell me about what they’re saying. Like the expressions are telling you or something like that. And it was like, Oh yeah, they all look happy. And like, they’re ready to listen to what you’re saying because they have their laptops open and that sort of shit.
And I will say like having seen the picture. Or the view of like myself in the audience. I’m like, you know, I think Alexa did like. I mean, if it was accurate and truly like a live present demo, then it’s like, it, it worked to the [00:23:00] way, like the humanity worked, right? Like it, they’re good at parsing image info.
Yeah.
Devindra: I don’t know why. If somebody had like stuck up their middle fingers or like did something really wild, like. They, it was a wi, they said it was a live demo, so they could have, Alexa could’ve just said that too. Like, could have pointed out they could have, I didn’t, dude, being a jerk. Yeah,
Cherlynn: I know. When I saw the camera open, I was like, yeah, I just put my hands up immediately.
I was like, yeah, but I, I wish I should have done something different, but I wanted to verify that it was live and so like, I was just trying to move around and see if I was in it.
Ben: Yeah. Good. That’s a good move actually. Yeah, no, that was a good move because otherwise it could easily be a canned
Cherlynn: response.
Right. So I saw myself and I like was in the outfit that I was wearing that like it’s just. Accurately at me, right? So, I mean, I guess that excitement in my expression did get correctly captured by Alexa, but you.
Devindra: It locked onto you. Like, this one girl is a little too, too excited. One person. Please calm down.
Please calm down. Yeah, like,
Cherlynn: chill? Your laptop’s falling off your lap? Like, maybe calm down. Um, but you know, so, [00:24:00] so, so, to my, like, what I was saying earlier is that it’s been a while since they promised or previewed this, and now it’s like, I don’t know that I was super excited by anything I saw a demo.
Hang on. There is one thing I am. And like everything else seems very reminiscent of like Gemini and like. It’s the new Siri and like, um, the, I, I, I mean, I guess opening. I also get
Devindra: back to what is like, what is it? Yeah, it is Alexa, but it is also smarter, more conversational. You don’t have to keep saying Alexa all the time.
You can continue the, whatever you’re saying to it, right.
Cherlynn: More conversational, natural. And if that’s reminiscent of anything other than what I’ve already said, it’s also very co pilot by the way. Like it’s just. It’s contextually aware of like the conversation so you don’t have to follow up and say like my favorite team is this and then like, you know, how did my favorite team do?
You can, you can, you know, it will remember that stuff within the same conversation. You can also send it documents and emails and stuff and have it pull out pertinent information for you. [00:25:00]So I think the demo that was given was like somebody sent their HOA, um, bylaws or whatever and asked if they could use solar panels and then Alexa was like, Right.
Alexa was like, Oh, you can, but make sure it’s just like, it seems like your HOA supports green energy, but doesn’t want it to be visible. So as long as you use it on the side of your roof, that’s not facing out, like you will be fine. That’s
Devindra: actually useful, by the way, like I just want to put that whole process, even if it means like you have to do something like drop a PDF to your Alexa through the website or the app or something like there are all these documents we live with.
Nobody reads them all right. So, and then you get people on next door or like your neighborhood, a Facebook group who don’t read asking the basic questions of stuff that’s already explained. So like, if you could just talk to your Alexa and like get accurate info, that’s cool. That is interesting. But also I feel like there’s a downside to that because then you’re putting all your trust in this machine, interpolated that correctly.
Right. So they showed off one example of like, uh, Oh, you got your. Kids schedule for their sports games. When am I supposed to bring snacks for that? If that thing gives you the wrong [00:26:00]date or tells you any bit of wrong info, that’s a problem for you That’s a problem for your kid That’s like social embarrassment because then you’re the parent who screws up bringing snacks and you don’t want to be that parent Because other parents are so judgy.
So that’s the part where I’m like, I don’t I don’t know how much we can trust this You know, this is a nice little helper, but you’re still gonna have to double check that info. I’d say
Cherlynn: Are you okay, Devendra? It feels like you think, uh, your parents are judgy.
Devindra: Uh, wait, just wait, Sherilyn. Wait till you encounter more parents.
I think
Cherlynn: there’s quite a few I’ve already seen online, but okay, so, I mean, there’s that stuff. And then what really intrigued me about the new Alexa, and I’m writing a story on this for the website, by the way. Or I’ve already written, it’s just not going up yet. Um, it’s the third party integration side of things.
So Amazon’s whole point, right? Let’s start from there. Amazon’s whole point was that these LLM based assistants, one of their greatest flaws or weaknesses is that they can’t really work well with APIs. So [00:27:00] Alexa Plus is going to work with third party services in three different ways. And it’s important because you think about how all these Machine learning or like these generative AI chatbots, they generate things for you, but they rarely ever can do things with other companies and businesses on your behalf.
And so this is going to be crucial to making like the Alexa plus experience much more useful because like so far we’ve been limited to talking to these chatbots and being like, create my essay for me, summarize this thing for me. Like it’s very. Limited to generative stuff, but once you can broaden beyond that, it gets really useful.
And I think that’s why I’m so intrigued. And so the three ways that Amazon’s going to use, um, make this work is one through API. So it’s already worked with, like, it says tens of thousands of its partners at launch, um, including Uber, Samsung, Xbox, or some of the logos that we saw. So those are some sort of API integration, which means I think they’ve worked together with the company to ensure that that works.
And that’s an impressive number [00:28:00]at launch. The second way is this thing that sounds very familiar. Basically, Alexa will be able to navigate websites on your behalf. It can, like, go out to, like, um, let’s say a model project’s website and see, like, Find a calendar. It’s a restaurant that children
Devindra: can’t stop ordering from.
Cherlynn: I love Mala project in New York. Um, but yeah, so you can just be like Alexa, like, um, what’s that restaurant we really like in the east village. And it’ll be like. Oh, these are the things and then like you can be like, Oh, can you make a reservation at that second one? And it will go to the website for you and scour it and then you can just tell it things like, Oh, for three people for how many and then it’ll make the reservation.
Um, if that sounds familiar, it’s because Google’s duplex. Was supposed to do that for you with restaurants, it would phone businesses on your behalf and you literally phone the businesses and
Devindra: talk to you.
Cherlynn: Yeah, it would use a human voice to talk to them. And that was kind of strangely implemented the Google [00:29:00] Duplex system because it was a human talking to a machine to interact with humans on their behalf.
Devindra: It offloaded so much work to the human workers and that’s what pissed me off about that whole thing. Right,
Cherlynn: it would bother actual human beings, which is where kind of it was very annoying. It’s format that Amazon is describing has machine talking to website and it kind of eliminates that like sort of human frustration.
It can probably be more likely to make mistakes in my opinion.
Devindra: Like how is it talking to the website is the key. Is it talking to OpenTable? Is it talking to like a service that already exists?
Cherlynn: Exactly. So, so no, so, so it can’t. So there’s two ways, right? One, so the open table thing is through the API method that I mentioned, um, before, which is when you have enough of these APIs, um, Alexa can form like what it calls experts.
So it can have a reservation expert. It can have a food ordering expert globe. That’s part of the API experience. The second part is it just goes out and scours the internet. I, I don’t know the full technical details [00:30:00] yet, and I’m going to ask Amazon for more. Okay. Um, but what it is is basically, yeah, the software is going out and scraping websites and being like, here’s the reservation system and here’s all the available things I’m going to click through as if I am a human being, clicking through these things and initiate the reservation.
So. I mean, I think that’s super intriguing. That also sounds familiar. And Devendra, you’ll like this and you can tell me if you have faith in this. It sounds a lot like the Revit R1s, like large action model.
Devindra: I mean, sure. It’s like getting the LLMs to do actions. That just, yeah, it kind of sounds like that.
Again, we have to see if it actually works. I have faith in APIs because robots understand APIs, right? You trigger a reservation function to this restaurant, has all the data already there. Having a robot just be like, can you scrape the text in this? Is, does this have a form to input for reservations? Can you input into like, that doesn’t, that will not work.
That definitely won’t.
Cherlynn: Right. So yeah. Yeah. And we saw that the Rabbit R1 struggled with [00:31:00] it. So I, I don’t know, I want it to work. I don’t know the details of how it’ll work. So like to be extra clear, right? Like we’re kind of speculating a little bit here on how it all works, but it seems in essence and spirit to be very similar to Duplex and the Rabbit.
R1s, LEMs, so we’ll have to see how effective it really is. My question
Devindra: to you, yeah, would you trust it? No, I can’t. Because the just like, open OpenTable on your phone or something, or just go to Google on your phone because sometimes you can reserve right from the Google Maps thing. Right. But just doing it in five minutes on your phone.
I trust that. And even then I’m like a little wary that the restaurant doesn’t always check those digital reservations.
Cherlynn: They don’t get a concept. You show up and there’s no table waiting for you. And there’s nothing for
Devindra: you. I don’t trust that just talking to this stupid speaker that I’ve had for a decade, you know, that had trouble, you know, understanding me, we’ll be able to effectively reserve something.
I would love it for it to be able to do something like, Hey, set up this reservation on open table and let me double check it or set up a grubhub order or Uber. To [00:32:00] me, that’s more useful because I like stuff I can trust. And the whole thing about the Apple, the rabbit device, I couldn’t trust anything. You can trust it.
Yeah.
Cherlynn: I wanted to say that like, um, the, the, the demo that they did was of thumbtack, right? So thumbtack is this like professional people that you can hire kind of like handy, but I guess it has a website and doesn’t have an app. So what I think that the second method that Amazon’s describing brings is that it eliminates, or at least like.
It opens up the playing field to smaller businesses that don’t have apps, that don’t have developers who can work with Amazon to integrate APIs or to come up with their own APIs. It just makes it like it levels the playing field a little bit, right? And then finally, the third way that like Amazon is making Alexa Plus work better with their party services is, um, and this is where it’s a bit dystopian.
It’s a through all these AI agents. So Alexa can go talk to AI agents on your behalf. Uh, so instead of having to like, um, the demo again, during the [00:33:00] presentation was too soon. Oh, so like Alexa, go ask this thing to make me a country music song about bodega cats. And it was like, cool, I think you heard the song Davindra, it was a kind of a cute song.
Devindra: I could barely hear it.
Cherlynn: But you also could have gone to the website to ask for this song, right? So one day eventually you’ll probably be able to get Alexa to talk to you, like say the United Airlines customer service chatbot or somewhere, your bank’s chatbot. And the idea of these bots talking to each other is just so funny to me.
Devindra: It’s, it’s sort of like, yeah, it’s, it’s, they have, um, sort of separated. The idea of visiting websites is just like, you’re asking something to go visit something for you and talk to that something. So you can think of AI agents as just like websites that talk to each other, I guess, is this kind of the way this is all going, um, briefly, like we should talk about like.
They talked about all sorts of other features for this too, like you’ll be able to order groceries just by talking to it or other delivery services. They [00:34:00] showed off the feature of like, um, your kids can use Alexa plus to, uh, basically conjure stories together and have like shared story time together, which is the whole thing.
So yeah, a lot of cool ideas. Um, to me, this is like the most useful form of like. Generative AI stuff I’ve seen in terms of like, I don’t want to type more stuff into search fields for, um, for co pilot or chat GPT. Like I want to be able to just talk to things and have it come back with information. My other thing though, is like, I am getting the sinking feeling that.
I may have to just divest myself of a lot of Amazon stuff at this point, because the very morning that this was announced, we also got, um, Jeff Bezos is a memo to the Washington post editorial, you know, op ed page where there was, he was just like, this is going to be my little kingdom and we will write about what is fair and whatever.
And like, we are in the midst of like a billionaire takeover of the American government, but also of so many other things. And I’m like, I. It is wild that he took, he chose that morning [00:35:00]to do it. Uh, Jeff Bezos has been on a weird trajectory for a long time, but now it’s like, can I justify Alexa Plus? Like, even if I, I’m still currently a Prime member, should I be using this or should I move to Google devices?
Google has done a lot of crap, crummy things too. Should we just like, be really careful about any of these AI tools at this point? Like, there are moral questions now, the way we have to kind of sit and ask ourselves. Yeah.
Cherlynn: Yeah. A bit depressing. A bit depressing.
Devindra: We can’t just like, you, it’s, it’s sort of like, you have to ask more questions now.
Like I think pre iPhone era, we were like, Oh, cool, cool tech, cool, fun toy. Yeah. I can get excited for this.
Speaker 2: It used
Devindra: to be fun. And post iPhone it’s like, well, no, this device requires lots of, uh, low wage labor in China and people were killing themselves at factories. There are all these moral costs to technology that we just used to, didn’t.
We didn’t think about that much and now it is front and center and yeah, I don’t know to me. It’s something I can’t stop thinking about at this point. So Alexa plus seems cool. I for many reasons. I don’t know if I’ll be able to [00:36:00] trust it, even though I won’t be paying anything extra for it. And maybe I should just give up on Amazon Prime altogether.
I don’t know if you have any other feelings on that show. Lynn or bed.
Cherlynn: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think I was going to like stop buying stuff from Amazon. I have drastically decreased the amount of shopping I do on Amazon and target. It. Um, I just go and buy local things, which like I was already trying to do anyway, but now I just quite like the, the balance is swung in a different direction by a lot.
And, um, but I do know that like Amazon, like the commerce and the way it’s. It’s, it services a lot of like businesses, like ours, it’s difficult for me to like, um, every time I need to like do an Amazon, like run or something, run digital run. Um, I’ll be like, all right, I’ll at least like try to shop it through an in gadget link or something to make myself back the 5 cents.
I don’t know. I’m just
Devindra: fraudulent. We’re not going to get to any of that on this podcast. I don’t know if
Cherlynn: it’s fraudulent, like, am I not allowed to buy something through? [00:37:00] I think it’s only
Ben: fraud if you’re doing it like automated, like 5, 000 times a day.
Cherlynn: I’m like every now and then I’ll do it. I’ve absolutely
Devindra: goosed my own affiliate links in the past.
I will admit to that. Right. I,
Cherlynn: I, I mean, if we need to cut this out, we’ll cut this out. But like, for me, it’s like,
Devindra: I’m not here
Cherlynn: telling y’all to do it. I’m just, I’m also transparently telling you that we do make
Devindra: money off of it. Became a thing. So it doesn’t matter
Cherlynn: anymore. So, so anyway, that, that’s the only way I can see continuing to use Amazon on an ad hoc basis.
And also when you can’t get something anywhere else, which is rare these days, but I can get, I can understand that for like certain parts of the country or the world that there’s no other option maybe, or there’s no easy. Uh, financially like, like comparative solution, right? Amazon is cheap. And if you’re in a bind, then like, maybe that’s like all you’ve got.
So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to judge anyone for not doing it. I’m just saying I’m trying to do it because [00:38:00]we have the power. We just have forgotten. We have the power. We just, instead of exercising our collective.
And I think that action is where it’ll, I really would be curious to see, I’m going on a tangent now, I’d be curious to see how Target’s doing now, but yeah.
Devindra: I know, yeah, people are active about it. Thoughts, Ben, and then we’ll run through it real quick.
Ben: So to get back on topic, I’m wondering how much of Dev your tendency towards saying like, Hey, can you build an order and then let me check it is based in just kind of like old internet.
Understanding like purchase requires big screen.
Devindra: We’re millennials. This is the thing. Like this, this is the old person’s thing. Like kids will be just like, talk to their AI agents and get stuff delivered and not see all the fees and not. But I wonder.
Ben: If they will be happy with what they end up getting because all it takes is like two or three garbled orders and people say, Oh, well, [00:39:00]maybe I don’t want to use this.
Or maybe I want to use this in a different way. So is the workflow for how you like build an order and then check it? Is that going to be something that people end up doing themselves initially and then it gets built in by the developers? Or the other way around. I
Devindra: don’t think you have the ability to do that.
You don’t have the ability to do it right now. Like you can have from what we’ve seen from the demos, it can produce an order for you, but I don’t think you can just like fill your cart and then you will empty the cart in your, you know, Grubhub app or whatever, finish an order. I don’t think that capability is there, but I think people are going to ask for it because yeah, they’re going to rent to things where you don’t understand the fees.
There’s a lot of fees on delivery apps and other things. Um, there’s a lot of ways these apps can like really screw you over in terms of On top of the
Ben: lack of ability for comparison shopping.
Devindra: Yeah, that’s what I mean. And then you’re like, okay, you’ll let the AI do the comparison shopping. I’m like, okay, who has the lowest fees?
Who has, what’s, where can I get [00:40:00]a pizza for a good price? It’ll get delivered to me right now. That’s the sort of thing AI should be able to solve. That’s well rated and everything. Um, I don’t know what I can trust. It
Ben: seems like we’re setting ourselves up for a situation where we’re like, okay, yeah, we’ll let the AI do the thinking and then there’s going to be some big, um, like kerfuffle about how the AI was actually like, no, actually I prefer Amazon services.
And we come back to the idea that Lenacon was right all along.
Devindra: Maybe. I mean, listen, literally, uh, right now Jeff Bezos is out there, uh, turning the Washington Post, you know, editorial page into his personal playground of just like, uh, Um, I don’t know. Freedom and, um, free enterprise, I think. Yeah, because that’s, that’s the thing that has trouble in America.
Let’s move on to other news real quick. I’m just gonna run down this stuff because I think it’s worth the reading. Check out our stories on all of these things. Uh, framework [00:41:00] had a bunch of devices that they announced. The modular laptop company, they announced, um, a modular desktop, which is a wild concept because desktops are modular.
Yeah, exactly. They’re modular and upgradable and Dan Cooper wrote up all these stories was like, yes, aren’t desktops already modular? But they have basically created this cool like little mini itx case that is easy to put together Um is using some standard parts and it’s also using that ryzen ai max chip We talked about at ces which has a pretty good gpu So this isn’t a desktop where you’re going to be putting in a graphics card or something but It’s kind of a cool project for like a teenager or a kid who doesn’t want to build a full size machine, but maybe put together a decently capable little box that can play some games.
And they’re also bringing Ryzen chips to the, uh, framework 13 laptop. And also something I’m kind of excited by for they are teasing a cheap two and one convertible 12 inch laptop, the framework laptop 12 that I think could be really, really cool. So again, similar, it’s going to have like modular components you can plug in, but it’s not [00:42:00]underpowered.
I don’t think we have pricing on that yet, but hopefully it’s going to be like decently priced. This, this could be a cool little thing for a lot of people. Um, so yeah, show me any thoughts on that on framework.
Cherlynn: I just am trying to care.
Devindra: I think it’s nice to
Cherlynn: support a smaller business than like the. HPs and the Lenovo’s and the, you know,
Devindra: Yeah, we complain about when those companies grew up all the time.
So, yeah, I think it’s, it’s good that there are alternatives.
Cherlynn: I think it’s unique and cool, um, in the way that nothing as a brand, as a phone maker is unique and cool. This is maybe the nothings of laptops. Um, sure. Frameworks has been around for a very long time and there’s a lot of like littler laptop brands out there.
Like, um, man, they’re escaping my mind. So like Frameworks is doing its own thing and I respect that.
Devindra: It’s a unique thing like the thing about nothing is that nothing nothing is doing is actually new or different They’re just like here’s a different design for an Android phone. It doesn’t actually right But if
Cherlynn: you don’t want to support Apple or [00:43:00] Google or Samsung for some reason nothing
Devindra: backed by like a major Chinese Corporation,
Cherlynn: uh, that might be one plus
Devindra: Yeah, yeah, well, I think
Cherlynn: nothing is on his own still so yeah,
Devindra: we don’t we don’t fully know a Christa wrote up the story Christa Bell wrote up about iPhones having a bug where they briefly changed racist liquid word racist to Trump In iOS dictation, I don’t To me, that doesn’t seem like a bug.
So we’re just going to move on from that clone robotics proto clone. Uh, one of the first, uh, lifelike robots, uh, a robot body that somebody has developed, it looks like a fricking nightmare. Uh, go check out our story on the proto clone, bipedal musculoskeletal Android V1. It looks like a zombie robot. And it’s dancing on wires.
It looks horrific.
Ben: You know what it looks like? The, um, what character from Prometheus? Yeah. With the kind of like sandy white skin?
Devindra: Yeah, the, uh, the origin I don’t know what they call them. It was like the originators, the people who [00:44:00] Spoilers for Prometheus the people who seeded humanity, essentially. So that’s cool.
That’s a whole thing. Uh, Benny brought up the story, human therapists prepare for battle against AI pretenders, and this is like, um, therapists essentially think like AI bots are going to be a big problem when people start to ask them for mental health help. And there have been stories of where people have harmed themselves.
Teenagers have hurt themselves because of what they were seeing from an AI bot, basically. So that’s dangerous. Yeah. The thing
Ben: that really concerns me is how accessible these are on Metaproducts right now. Because if you do enough scrolling on Instagram, you’ll see like their little Like chat bot insert between a couple of the posts of, you know, from accounts that you follow, hopefully a viewer would be able to see like, Hey, this is right next to like an AI clone of the hawk to a girl or something.
So maybe I shouldn’t consider this [00:45:00]like actually high quality psychological help. But, uh, you never know.
Devindra: In so many ways, we are not prepared for AI. You know what, what I keep seeing in Tik Tok is like a lot of, um, I’d call them tired millennials. We’re just like, um, you know, guys, we are sandwiched between the boomers who didn’t understand technology.
And then the, the youngs, the Gen Z who grew up with tech, but also grew up with really easy to use tech. So they never had to fully understand it. And we’re
Ben: sandwiched between the boomers and the iPad babies
Devindra: and the iPad babies. And now we’re like, Oh, so now we got to explain. I got to tell my parents how to use their phones, but also make sure my kids don’t like.
Uh, talk to kidnappers on, on Minecraft or Roblox or whatever. So we, we are screwed digitally. So, which is also why I’m so, I have so much trepidation around AI in general, like this stuff is going to happen. These therapists are right to be worried because people, we are so, we are weak minded primates when it comes to talk, you know, putting.[00:46:00]
Um, I don’t know, souls are putting like a meaning into things. So if a chatbot is talking to you like a human, you’re going to treat it like a human. You’re going to treat that advice like it’s coming from a friend or something. And that worries me. Sherilyn, I know you care about mental health stuff. I don’t know if you’ve thought about how this could hit.
Cherlynn: I mean, I’ve, I’ve thought that the, I mean, social media has already done this. Social media has already destroyed kind of where people get their mental health info from. Um, I mean, we started first with the internet and then as the barrier to entry gets lower and lower, now we’re at the barrier to entry of being a human, at least, is also falling down, so it seems like it’s just, yeah, I mean, I talked to my therapist about it too, and my therapist and I, we’re, we’re both, you know, concerned, we’re just like, eh, but it’s not easy for people to, you know, get help, um, and therapy is expensive.
So they’re going to reach
Devindra: out to whatever resources they can get. They’re going to find
Cherlynn: whatever they can. I mean, I, I could go on a rant for hours about how much I hate like the advice that people on Reddit parrot at each other because they [00:47:00] saw one person make this one comment one time that they liked and then they just copy and paste it everywhere else.
I really hate that one person made a joke like years ago that I too choose this man’s wife and now you see it everywhere by like all kinds of other people because They can’t come up with their own jokes or something. I mean, I’m being mean. I think it’s a funny joke, but it’s
Devindra: true though. Yeah.
Cherlynn: Is the same delete Facebook,
Ben: hit the gym lawyer up like, yeah, it, it is unhelpful.
Um, and from the point of view of the developers, especially if they have no contact with. Actually going to therapy they might be like, oh, you know what therapists are like just giving out the same advice to all of their clients So why don’t we automate that because I don’t know the therapists might be bored or something.
But oh my god That is such a misunderstanding
Devindra: Yeah, too much. There’s too much information flowing around, unfortunately, and like we are so bad at processing it, which is also why I’m worried about. Yeah, in general, because it’s also simplifying that information even more for a really gullible populace.
Anyway, let’s [00:48:00] move on to what we’re working on. I’m reviewing a lot of shit. A lot of GPUs are coming in. There is one fun CPU that I’m looking forward to testing in a couple weeks. So more on that soon. I don’t know if you want to shout anything out, Sherlynn.
Cherlynn: I mean, it’s non stop from here on out, guys, we strap in, it’s review season, it’s event season for some reason already.
So, yeah, stay tuned, come over to Engadget. com.
Devindra: It’s the end of February, we’re still recovering from CES. Yeah, for what it’s
Cherlynn: worth,
Devindra: this weekend
Cherlynn: is Mobile World Congress. Like this weekend, Mobile World Congress starts. So just pay attention, you know, there’s gonna be quite a lot of stuff coming
Devindra: up. I miss going to Mobile World Congress.
I miss doing that whole thing. It’s actually been I think my, for the first time I did that was like, I did it on my own at my last site in 2012. And that was like a wild experience of when, like, there was so much 5G hype, there was so much 5G hype in the early, simpler days. Simpler days. I saw that Nokia, the 41 megapixel camera for the first time and that was like a big deal back then.
Anyway, shout out to Mobile World [00:49:00]Congress. Check out our coverage on all that stuff. Let’s move on to our pop culture picks for the week. I just want to say I’ve been playing a lot of Avowed. Avowed is just where my jam is because the world is insane right now. This is Obsidian’s, um, kind of their Skyrim.
Their like simpler, more focused version of Elder Scrolls. It’s on Xbox Game Pass right now. Um, so if you have Game Pass, it’s really easy to try. I just love the look of this world. I love exploring it. Um, has a really good aesthetic. If you remember that scene in the movie Annihilation, which is one of my favorites, but the scene where people start to turn into plants, the bodies of plants, um, Avowed is a game where.
You play somebody who has been touched by a God at birth and you have these like Godlike powers. Um, and as you design your character, you can have like plant face, basically, you can have, uh, roots growing out of your heads or seashells or things like that. I think people, people who are tryptophobic may have a lot of trouble with this game because it’s leaning into like really weird looking designs [00:50:00]for people, but also.
It’s a really cool fantasy world. Um, I just love like whenever I’m playing, I try to like put it in an hour at a time. I discover things all the time. Like there’s always something interesting happening. It’s a really fun world to just sit and explore. Also really useful thing to just like, you know, I’m testing so many video cards.
It’s a really good way to compare them to each other. So about, I’m really digging it. Uh, Sholin, anything you want to shout out?
Cherlynn: Yeah, I’ve been on a documentary kick, but, uh, I would first start by telling you what you should not watch. Um. It’s not a documentary, but based on like real events, the Netflix show called Apple Cider Vinegar.
Really? I was saying I
Devindra: was going to recommend that to you.
Cherlynn: I was going to say that I started, I don’t know if I already brought it up on this show, but I’m now realizing that I didn’t. I tried to watch, I tried starting to watch it maybe a couple weeks ago. And I just could not, um, it’s a bit too triggering for me.
Uh, it’s someone who’s gone through a lot of like people in my life with cancer diagnoses, dying from cancer, that sort of stuff is a lot. Um, [00:51:00] I already like my, I think in last year, one of the episodes last year, I recommend this command as the podcast is that was a woman who was posing as someone suffering from breast.
Cancer. Apple cider vinegar tells the tale of, um, Belle Gibson in the drama dramatized like, uh, retelling of the story of Belle Gibson, um, who claimed to be dying from brain cancer and all kinds of terminal cancers, but actually lied about it, but profited majorly off of it, and was a big
Devindra: healthcare like a guru.
She did a lot to spread a lot of like health, like new forms of health, right? Whatever you call it, natural health.
Cherlynn: Yes,
Devindra: basically. Yes,
Cherlynn: like, oh, you can eat your way out of cancer, basically. Like, eat well, eat healthy. Um, and, and, and was more or less pitching it as a way to, like, you know, heal herself. But anyway, uh, and instead of watching Apple Cider Vinegar, I couldn’t, but I was still very Drawn into the story.
And so thankfully Netflix actually has a different, um, series called the search for Instagram’s worst con artists. And it is about bell Gibson as well, but it is more of a [00:52:00]documentary retelling. The reason I really couldn’t, um, stick through apple cider vinegar is because they also bring up this other influencer that, uh, bell Gibson drew inspiration from.
And that person was a very young person. Yeah. Mila, um, she was diagnosed with, uh, an aggressive form of, I guess, sarcoma cancer. And so it had to be, you know, she was very young and was contending with these things that had to do with amputation. And that, that was when I had to stop because it was getting a bit too close to home.
I
Devindra: will say like, I think the show is really, really well done if, but it is like a lot. All at once. Um, it is well acted Caitlin Dever, who plays bell Gibson. She has been one of my favorite, like young actors for a while. I think she was in justified at one point and she was just incredible in that show. So yeah, it is a really well made show and very much like it, it feels like it’s made by an Instagram, you know, somebody who was raised on Instagram basically, because like it’s edited in that way, it like goes through a lot of like different ways of showing the story it’s juggling three storylines at once, it is good, but I can understand why it’s too much [00:53:00] for you, Sherlyn.
Cherlynn: Yeah. So, so to that point, I really, I mean, I liked it. I just couldn’t keep watching. I do agree with you that the style of it is really nice and very easy to follow. Um, but even if you did enjoy Apple Cider Vinegar and you want to continue watching and following on that theme, then yes, go over and watch the Search for Instagram’s Worst Con Artist.
It’s a two part docuseries. Um, they interview Belle Gibson’s brother, uh, Belle Gibson’s stepfather. Um, and, and the bunch of journalists who like pursued that story and how they came to, to find out what was happening. So, yeah, very interesting to me. And so, I will leave you with that as my recommendation this week.
Well, that’s it for the episode this week. Everyone, thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by game composer, Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O’Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Ellman. You can find DaVindra online at
Devindra: at BlueSky at at DaVindra and I podcast about movies and TV at the FilmCast at FilmCast.
com
Cherlynn: If you want to [00:54:00] send me like social media accounts that are actually doing good in this world, you can hit me up, I guess, on threads at Sherlynn’s Instagram or preferred, uh, is on BlueSky at You can also email us your thoughts at podcast at Engadget. com, leave us a review wherever you’re listening to your podcast and subscribe in your favorite podcast platforms.
Devindra: I’ve got a good social media account for you, Sherlyn, actually, and that is go watch Keith Lee’s videos because Keith Lee has been touring the UK. And having a bad time with British food, it is hilarious to see in the Brits are fighting online.
Cherlynn: I love that. And
Devindra: it is, it’s really, I will give
Cherlynn: you, I will give you one like social media account that I followed that is kind of an example of what I’m looking for.
Uh, we rate dogs. It’s literally my favorite. Very nice. Thanks to everyone that like struggled with us through the technical issues for the live stream again today. We really appreciate you and sorry, we couldn’t make it like the whole show.
Devindra: It’s a, it was both [00:55:00] my computer deciding not to work, but also Google, uh, YouTube just stopped streaming.
YouTube just stopped letting us stream. So that’s fun. Yeah.
Cherlynn: Sorry guys.
Devindra: Sorry folks, but thank you for listening and thanks for trying.
Cherlynn: So I was able to sit down with, uh, Daniel Roche, who is the vice president of Alexa, and he was on stage presenting and doing demos of the new Alexa Plus and how it integrates, uh, with third parties.
You can listen to this interview now. It will tell you a lot more about. Um, all that third party integration stuff we were describing.
Speaker 5: The presentation today, your part was specifically, it seemed, about how Alexa Plus would work with all these different third party, uh, apps and integrations. Especially given LLMs don’t have, you know, natural, like, accessibility for APIs and stuff.
Speaker 6: Not natively integrated, yeah.
Speaker 5: Could you, just for our, uh, podcast audience, and for myself as kind of a refresher, Go over that really quickly again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so at a high level there are three different ways that Alexa Plus [00:56:00] integrates with other services, capabilities, devices out there. And by the way, at launch it will be integrated with tens of thousands of different services, devices, and capabilities out there. The first way is, uh, through APIs. So APIs, you know, LLMs don’t natively support APIs, calling APIs, filling out arguments the right way, choosing methods, etc.
A big part of what we’ve done with Alexa Plus is, uh, basically building, uh, the way, you know, the nature of those integrations. And then, uh, building an at scale such that it can accommodate so many different types of integrations. You heard me talk about experts in our show today. So, uh, experts are the fundamental way that we accomplish that.
So the information expert is really, really good at going out and. Uh, taking advantage of, you know, partnerships that we have with information sources, for example, right? Or, um, you saw, uh, a scheduling and reservation expert today, uh, [00:57:00] use OpenTable APIs to complete a reservation for a restaurant that’s just a few blocks from here.
Um, and so, APIs, uh, uh, is the first way that I would, that I would say in terms of the three, the second way is, you know, partners don’t necessarily show up and have all of these different APIs ready to go, but they might have a website, uh, that has all the capabilities they want to offer to customers.
Thumbtack’s a great example of that. Um, they, you know, help you provide, uh, find, uh, service providers across a huge range of different kinds of services you need for your house. You need your gutters cleaned. You need a plumber. You need, uh, I use the example of my oven is broken. Um, and in this case, Alexa Plus, uh, gathers some information from you.
When do you need them? What kind of service do you need? Et cetera. So in a voice interaction, you could say, Hey, my oven’s broken. I need someone as soon as possible. I’ve got some cooking to do. Um, Alexa gives you a range of possible options, you can help pick, [00:58:00]and then Alexa goes off on the internet and goes to a website like Thumbtacks and doesn’t need APIs to go to the calendar components and book a time and to the selection components and find a service provider and to all the different experiences that you might navigate yourself on their website.
Alexa Plus goes off and does all that, uh, comes back and just tells you it’s done. Period. Done. That’s the second way. The third way is in an agent to agent way. So if there’s another generative AI agent out there, and we could probably both name several, but the example I used today was Suno. Very cool entrepreneurs.
By the way, and a very cool set of capabilities, uh, and they’re doing generative music. So, you can just say what you want for a song. Uh, my example today was about a bodega cat. I just wanted to prove that you really can write any song you want. Um, a country song. That’s right, yeah, fewer bodegas out in the country.
[00:59:00] But, uh, you can definitely write a country music song about a bodega cat using Alexa Plus. And the integration with another generative AI agent in Suno, you know, we do believe the world is going to be full of different generative AI agents that have different capabilities. Alexa can help orchestrate across that full range of space so that customers can take advantage of those super specialized experiences like Suno.
Speaker 5: I have a few questions.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Um, I’ll start with, you know. A way to kind of make sense of what you’re describing, which is to compare it to things that I already know are out there. And so I don’t know if you’ve heard of or observed, um, Rabbit’s R1 device. Rabbit, um, you know, team at Teenage Engineering made this wearable slash device.
I have seen it, yeah. Yeah, and I think one of the biggest selling points for those of us in the industry was less the Hardaware and all of the fun stuff like the crank and more of the like promise of the large action model they brought up, which sounds a lot like what you’re doing with Alexa and APIs, right?
They’re using [01:00:00] You know, machine
Cherlynn: learned, uh, chatbots or whatever their AI assistant, uh, is being called and using that to kind of navigate third party apps without any need for really deep integration. Um, that’s kind of how I’m sort of seeing a bit of a similarity. I’m also seeing a bit of similarity to Google’s duplex, uh, which calls restaurants and makes reservations on your behalf.
So when you’re talking about the second way where the partners that don’t have a Alexa can go navigate the website for you. It sounds
Speaker 5: somewhat structurally similar, similar. Is that correct?
Speaker 6: It might be from a technology perspective. I mean, I do think from a customer experience perspective, customers just want the thing done.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: They don’t have to be responsible or care about any of these things, right? They just want, I need a plumber or I want to book a table, et cetera. So we try to make sure that for, for consumers, for customers, they, Just see the same super easy to use experience, whether it’s voice or a couple taps on the app, let’s say on your phone to kick off a task.
But then yes, I think, I think you’re right to say that, um, there’s this range of options happening in the [01:01:00]background, whether it’s API integration, agentic, uh, Alexa going off online and getting something done. I do think the scale of Alexa Plus is unique.
Speaker 2: Coming out
Speaker 6: of the box with tens of thousands of different, uh, services and devices already integrated, uh, on day one for Alexa Plus, I think is unique.
Speaker 5: By the integrated, do you mean that these third party services have to do any work on the backend? Is it all the second approach, which is the website crawling, or is it like some of them have to tweak? There’s a range.
Speaker 6: There’s a range. Um, we have a lot of deeply integrated API partners, uh, Uh, you know, agents going off online is newer technology, uh, and, uh, you know, agent to agent is really cutting edge, uh, you know, agents interacting for a customer on their behalf.
So I think on the timescale, um, uh, that’s how, that’s how it looks. I
Speaker 5: mean, I think there is like a lot of appeal to just talking to the one assistant in your life and having that assistant talk to all the other AI chatbots [01:02:00] out there for you. Can I, can I just ask, I want to be clear on this. The Suno was one example, but can you say used?
Alexa to talk to Capital One’s customer service chatbot to get a, like a transaction, you know, refunded or something.
Speaker 6: So nothing to, nothing to share today about, you know, about, uh, any of the selection that’s, uh, you know, available over time. But I will tell you that the SDK is all about. Okay. You can, you know, use Alexa to, to make connection with, for you on your behalf, other agents and complete tasks.
Right. So that’s the whole idea.
Speaker 5: Right. That’s what I was trying to get at. You’re on to it for sure. Okay, gotcha. Because I didn’t want to like, that was the first example I could think of. Yeah. United Airlines, for example, is the other one. I
Speaker 6: mean, we know, again, I think customers are going to benefit from tons of different generative AI.
And we strongly believe that they should work together so that they’re not disconnected.
Speaker 5: So the other thing you said is that these, um, what people want is like something that they can just [01:03:00] talk to and have it done for them, right? But then the other thing that people want, in my opinion, that is lacking a lot of today is a solution they can trust to be accurate all the time.
So how has Amazon worked around or how does Amazon plan to work around this issue that This notion that Gen AI as it stands is still not 100 percent reliable and accurate and trustworthy and that hallucinations can happen.
Speaker 6: What is a, you know, these are non deterministic models at the, you know, at the outset in generative AI, right?
They produce excellent conversation, they produce, you know, multiplicity of different answers even faced with the same question. But you can build systems around those models to ensure that they’re deeply grounded in knowledge. You heard me talk about that today. That is. grounding in our own knowledge graph from Amazon, you know, using, uh, reliable sources on the internet, using partnerships with authoritative sources.
You know, we have hundreds of those already on day one so that we get answers right. [01:04:00] Uh, cause customers want to be able to count on that experience. So I think, you know, what you have to do is use the right tool for the job. LLMs are at the foundation of the architecture, but they’re not the only thing answering the question.
And I actually think in the industry, Uh, there’s been a mistake of thinking a model is a product. So the reason you’re asking the question is because other products will simply give you an answer out of the LLM.
Speaker 2: If
Speaker 6: you’re asking for an authoritative answer, that’s not actually sometimes the way to get one.
And I think that’s what you’re highlighting. So, we have taken great care with Alexa Plus. Will it make mistakes? Every piece of software makes mistakes, um, but, but we’re working hard to, to ground it in, in knowledge.
Speaker 5: So to clarify that last point that you said, and to make sure I’ve got it right, you’re saying that instead of just relying on the assistant to give the answer back, you might have the assistant say, according to Succentouch website that, you know, came up with my search on the internet, this is the Most accurate sounding answer to your question.
Yeah, or this
Speaker 6: [01:05:00] authoritative source in my knowledge graph, right? I mean, you saw me ask about Alex Brigman, you know, some nerdy baseball stats today. And the fact is Triggered a lot
Speaker 5: of fights in the Engadgeteam, but sure, let’s go. That’s what
Speaker 6: that was all about.
Speaker 5: I loved it.
Speaker 6: That’s what that was all about. But I do think, you know, you want, you want those answers to be right.
And that means you need an authoritative source that’s going to tell me about How well Alex Bregman does at Fenway. I need to be prideful here in Manhattan asking those questions.
Speaker 5: Um, the other thing I wanted to ask, and it is a bit less big picture, uh, Alexa Plus is coming out, uh, early access starting next month, um, and people who don’t have a plan will probably need to pay 20 a month.
For people who, I guess, have Prime, that update probably occurs automatically. Um, if you’re already paying for Prime, right? Like,
Speaker 6: what will the customer experience be like when I get Alexa Plus? It’s included in your membership.
Speaker 5: So, let’s say you have That’s it. That’s all. Right. So, you have an Echo speaker at home that’s tied to [01:06:00] your Prime account, then it’ll update on its own over the air.
What’s gonna
Speaker 6: happen is we’re starting with our large screen devices. So, we’ll be rolling out to customers in waves. starting in March, uh, late March, most likely, um, eight inch plus screens will be the first wave of customers, uh, that will get access. A customer does accept, we are changing the experience for them.
We want to make sure customers know that. So you would see it either on a device like an echo show, or you’d see it in an email, simple press of the button. And then for prime customers, the Alexa plus experience is completely updated for non prime customers. You can start.
Speaker 2: Uh, in
Speaker 6: that situation, uh, paying a 19.
99. There is an early access period to have in there, but that’s the, that’s the simple approach. Gotcha.
Speaker 5: If you don’t have the, uh, a Prime membership, and you somehow have an Echo speaker that’s not tied to it, would you still access the older version of Alexa on that?
Speaker 6: The original version of Alexa continues to be available.
Speaker 5: And [01:07:00] how would they play with each other? Is there any sort of You know, a scenario where they would interact and one experience would be, you know, so different that it gets in the way of the other, you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: Not that we’ve found.
Speaker 5: Okay. So you’ve done testing around this?
Speaker 6: We have done testing around it.
I’m, you know, I’m, I don’t know that we’ve hit every possible imaginable case, but yeah, we believe that that’ll, that’ll work fine.
Speaker 5: And then tell me a little bit about the setup process. I know you mentioned that there’s like acknowledgement that some things are going to look different. You’re upgrading to Alexa Plus, but do you have to like re sign into some accounts?
Do you have to like. You know, um, allow permissions again to different integrations, for example, or does it happen on a case by case basis when like, you know, everything that you’ve
Speaker 6: done carries forward. So, for example, let me just give you a hardcore example. Some people have spent years setting up their smart home, you know, I bought a plug from this provider, I bought a light from that provider, etc.
And the reason that customers love Alexa is it takes away all the complexity. I don’t need to remember who built what device. I talk to them all just the same. One consistent interface for everything. [01:08:00] Uh, and we would never take that away. So that’s a, you know, that’s the kind of thing where we want customers to continue to benefit from all the, from everything that they’ve put together in their home, right?
So, day one, they just advance to a new version of the way they interact with those things. They don’t have to reset up anything.
Speaker 5: And if you’re adding a new service, for example, like you just signed up for, I don’t know, Netflix for the first time, or Uber for the first time. Yeah, you would just
Speaker 6: do that in the ways that you do it today.
Gotcha. It’s a little bit easier, frankly, because Alexa can walk you through those setups in many more cases. So you don’t have to dig around in the Alexa app. You can just say, Alexa, I want to set up a streaming account with Hulu or something. In many cases, you get a QR code and it’s just one simple tap.
So Alexa can walk you through a bunch of that herself. We’d like to say, Alexa is an expert and now an expert on herself.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Kind of, I mean, we’re seeing this develop everywhere else in, you know, the consumer tech space, like with, you know, redesign Siri, for example, or like Gemini and all of that stuff.
Where, where do [01:09:00] you see Amazon’s generative AI ambitious playing out outside of Alexa?
Speaker 6: Well, I think, I mean, you heard Andy talk about how much is going on at the company. Uh, I mean so much, right? And, you know, unbelievable and highly differentiated cloud services, Hardaware underlying that. Uh, and then on top of that, you know.
Literally a thousand plus consumer applications of Gen AI, where Alexa is literally one of those. It’s one, if you read the list, Alexa would say one, you know, Alexa plus is one of them. So it’s a huge amount of work that we’re doing. I think, I think our ambitions at Amazon are always just grounded in what we can do for customers though.
Um, we’ve got consumer customers, we’ve got enterprise customers, we’ve got such a broad range of customer entertainment customers. Um, So, artists, authors, et cetera, you know the list, uh, uh, because, uh, we think there’s a lot we can do. [01:10:00]
Speaker 5: What is your favorite thing that Alexa Plus can do?
Speaker 6: Uh, I showed some of them, frankly.
I mean, I think if you ask Mara or Panos the same question, I think one of the ways we divided up our work today was to just say, well, what do we love to do? Like, what are the things that we actually do?
Speaker 5: Panos with the ring camera thing. Yeah, he loves that. And you know,
Speaker 6: he loves seeing his kids. He loves his dogs.
When we saw the driver yesterday, he was like, Daniel, come in here. You know, where do you sit? See this? ’cause he’d been telling me about that driver and he hadn’t had a ring footage as far as I know. Yeah. Uh, where we had seen that happen with Aries. But, um, so you’re seeing some of the best I do, I do a lot of information exploration with Alexa.
Okay. Um, I sit next to my, my, uh, teenage kids and do homework. Mm-hmm .
Speaker 2: With
Speaker 6: them. We do a lot of information exploration together just to, just as we’re doing schoolwork together, we do. together. I’ve asked about, you know, I had forgotten the fundamental theorem of calculus, like how you would say it. Alexis got the fundamental theorem of calculus, I, you know, the fingertips for you.
So, um, [01:11:00] there’s a lot, there’s a lot of that in my house, for sure. A lot of, we’re getting excited for the baseball season coming. Uh, I mentioned, you know, like, like booking things and using some of these new integrations and open table and Uber and, you know, food and dinnertime is tricky at my house. My kids.
It’s Row Crew and they come home ravenous. So using Grubhub through Alexa with my, uh, Alexa app and it’s in the tray on the way home. Uh, it’s awesome. It’s just super easy to just say what you want. Yeah. Last orders, it all comes up. So I think, I think you saw, I think you saw a lot of my favorite things today.
Speaker 5: Yeah. We saw a lot of things on stage today. It was really hard to kind of imagine in my real world and what my favorite would be. Um, I know we’re kind of close to time. I have so many like nitty gritty questions. And things like, you know. Um, they just flew out of my brain. You were talking, oh, the Ring camera stuff.
Like, you know, it seems, I know it works only with Ring cameras, that video search feature, but it doesn’t work with like, I know it doesn’t work with Blink cameras just yet, but. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it’s with Ring, the smart [01:12:00] video search. Yeah, because you’re also seeing, you’re also seeing AI applied to the video sources, right?
I think Alexa on stage might have even said, which we, which we’ve heard once before, I think say, I found with a husky.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has
Speaker 6: learned.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: Through video analysis that Ares is a husky.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah.
Speaker 6: So it’s often. Could you
Speaker 5: ascribe a name to the husky?
Speaker 6: I think you could. I think panels could say, yep, that’s Aries.
Um, but I’m not sure we’d have to go.
Speaker 5: We’re kind of early days. So, I mean, we’re going to wait. It’s just,
Speaker 6: it’s just the beginning. It’s a lot, but it’s just the beginning.
Speaker 5: And we’ll end on this. How long has it been until like today since working on next gen or Luxor?
Speaker 6: I mean, it takes to get to this point. You really need.
Large language models to have reached the state of the art that they are at now. And then you’ve got tens of thousands of services and devices and capabilities integrated hundreds of experts in different areas, right? So it’s been a big lift But you know a lot is dependent on [01:13:00] where we are with the state of the art in LLMs And I would say that we’re there reasonably recently.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
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