A really great article on Ars Technica highlights the struggle AI assistants like Alexa and Siri are having making money. Amazon is expected to lose an eye popping $10 billion from last year’s purchases of Amazon Alexa and other devices. $3 billion of that is tied to Alexa

Assistants Struggle to Make Money

Since 2014, voice assistants have found it difficult to make money. The services provide great value for users when asking about the weather, traffic, and other abstractions, but they haven’t been a driver for consumer purchases. Amazon expected consumers to use Alexa to purchase products quickly, but it’s never happened.

TV to the Rescue

Amazon’s Fire TV business is its fastest growing device segment and they’ve expanded sales in Mexico and Europe. Their latest idea is to combine the Alexa voice activated experience with a visual shopping experience. This will help consumers see the products they want to buy instead of trusting a faceless assistant to make the right choices.

Alexa could be a differentiator here because OK Google nor Siri have their own TV only hardware. For instance, my LG TV runs Google’s TV operating system, but doesn’t have OK capabilities built in.

It’ll be an interesting experiment to see how well Alexa fares on television. AI is becoming a lot more user friendly, and it’ll be a shame to see an assistant perish just as this technology becomes useful.