Amazon's Alexa smart assistant is having major issues right now - and it seems to be affecting everyone
People using Amazon's smart-assistant Alexa on Friday, either through an app or one of Amazon's many Echo devices, are finding that the typically attentive assistant isn't working as it normally does.
One Twitter user took a video showing how Alexa on his Amazon Echo Dot is acting sluggish and not answering questions properly:
Amazon Echo owners at Business Insider confirmed that Alexa is acting up, and it's being slow and buggy. I tried playing a song on an Alexa-powered Sonos One speaker and Alexa simply said "Sorry, something went wrong."
Alexa acting up doesn't just affect your usual news bulletins or music controls. Anyone who uses Alexa to control smart-home devices, like smart light bulbs, could experience delays before Alexa carries out your command. In some cases, those connected devices may not work at all, if Alexa is having trouble connecting to the internet. In all likelihood, given the widespread issues, this has something to do with Amazon's normally reliable web-services cloud, known as AWS.
Amazon was not immediately available to respond to comment.