Amazon Alexa stopped working for a short period of time today likely because of an outage of Amazon Web Services, resulting in a large number of users being prevented from using their Echo devices to interact with the digital assistant for any of its current capabilities. According to the details of the reported issue Amazon has since fixed whatever the problem was that was causing Alexa not to work, but during the down time it’s said that Alexa-powered speakers would react to queries and commands like it normally would as if it was processing things, but would continue to look as if things were working for about 15 seconds only to stop with no response or command having been fulfilled just before Alexa telling users a connection to the web was lost.
While this likely caused some confusion and frustration with people who rely on their Echo devices for various things, it didn’t take Amazon long to get things back up and running, though it does showcase that no matter how good a product is things can certainly happen that result in these kinds of issues, especially when the product itself relies on a service like AWS which can have an outage in a regional section of the country and affect more than a few people.
Issues with Alexa aside, Amazon has big plans for it’s digital assistant beyond having it be a personal shopper, smart home controller, and tool for answering questions. Amazon also reportedly wants Alexa to be a language translator and have it all work in real-time, which would be quite the accomplishment if it worked properly and without lag. Still, if outages on AWS like the one that happened today are any indication, it might be a while before Amazon is able to reach such goals, as it would likely want to ensure that those kinds of problems don’t happen before it starts implementing bigger and grander functions for its digital assistant software. That said, Amazon being able to get things fixed in such a short period of time speaks volumes about its dedication to making everything a smooth user experience when and where it can.