It was a tale of two voice assistants.
Amazon and Apple showed during Thursday earnings calls just how far apart they are in the race to build a smarter AI assistant.
Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the delay for the company’s much-anticipated Siri upgrade, first announced nearly a year ago as part of Apple Intelligence.
“We need more time to complete our work on these features so they meet our high-quality bar,” Cook told analysts, adding, “It’s just taking a bit longer than we thought”.
Cook didn’t give a specific timeline for releasing its more personal, context-aware version of Siri, but Apple said in March it expected it in the “coming year.”
While Cook fielded questions about delays, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy focused on rollout. Alexa+, the company’s revamped voice assistant powered by generative AI, has already reached over 100,000 paying users since its February launch, he said on Thursday’s earnings call.
“People are really liking Alexa+ thus far,” Jassy said. “We have a lot more functionality that we plan to add in the coming months.”
Alexa+ includes AI-powered features like providing dinner recipes, texting friends and family, and sending out party invitations, Panos Panay, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, said at the February launch event.
Both companies were early movers in the voice assistant market. Apple, which introduced Siri in 2011, has been scrambling to catch up in a race in which it had a head start.
Alexa+ has also faced some holdups. It’s missing some key features demoed at launch, including third-party app integration, AI-generated bedtime stories, and gift idea suggestions.
In March, Apple took the rare step of delaying the rollout of its upgraded Siri, which is set to be powered by large language models. It was first announced at its June 2024 WWDC event.
The new Siri features — including on-screen awareness, personal context, and deeper app integration — were originally expected with iOS 18.4, which was released on March 31. Now, they are being tipped by Apple observers to land with iOS 19, which could arrive this fall.
