The full origins of Alexa and Amazon Echo

Jeff Bezos desperately wanted a voice computer. He’s been saying it publicly since Amazon’s early days, telling anyone who will listen why voice makes interacting with technology easier and more natural. (And to buy stuff from Jeff Bezos.) But when a team at Amazon set out to make the voice computer a reality, they faced an endless series of difficult problems. Ultimately, they created two products, the Echo speaker and the Alexa voice assistant, that would help bring a new kind of computer to millions of people.

In this episode of Release date, We tell the story of the Echo’s evolution within Amazon, its surprise launch and instant success, and its somewhat complicated life and legacy since then. David Pearce, Hayden Field, and Jennifer Pattison Toohey discuss all the ways the Amazon team was able to catch up with products like Siri, the tricky but clever tests the team ran to see how people would use the device, and why Bezos decided to launch the Echo with no fanfare at all. Next, the hosts discuss whether Alexa and Echo helped start the AI ​​revolution, or missed it entirely.

This is the fifth episode of the third season of the series Release date. Here’s how to get every episode and all the other fun stuff as soon as it drops:

If you want to learn more about the history of Alexa and Amazon Echo, here are some links to get you started: