I bought my first Amazon Echo smart speaker a decade ago, not long after Amazon unveiled it in late 2014. The 9.25-inch tall tube sat on my hutch for years, casually responding to "Alexa" weather queries, answering what I might term simple trivia questions, and playing music from some of my favorite services on a surprisingly good speaker system. 10 years later, it's still doing all that, and it occurred to me how rare it is to have a modern piece of solid-state consumer electronics still functioning after a decade of service. But what if that ends tomorrow?
In roughly 24 hours, Amazon is expected to unveil its biggest Alexa update, one that's set to transform it from a relatively basic digital assistant into a true generative chatbot, one that can stand nearly toe-to-toe with ChatGPT and Google Gemini (at least when it comes it asking questions via speech).
