How the Amazon Echo learned to talk — and listen

David Pierce

is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

Jeff Bezos badly wanted a voice computer. He had been saying so publicly since the very early days of Amazon, telling anyone who would listen about why voice might make it easier and more natural to interact with technology. (And to buy stuff from Jeff Bezos.) But when a team at Amazon set out to actually make the voice computer a reality, they encountered a seemingly endless series of hard problems. Eventually, though, 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.

On this episode of Version History, we tell the story of the Echo’s development inside Amazon, its surprise launch and immediate success, and its somewhat complicated life and legacy since. David Pierce, Hayden Field, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy discuss all the ways Amazon’s team had to catch up to products like Siri, the devious and 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. Then, the hosts debate whether Alexa and the Echo helped start an AI revolution, or missed it entirely.

This is the fifth episode of the third season of Version History. Here’s how to get every episode, and all our other fun stuff, as soon as it drops:

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

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• David Pierce