If you woke up today with the idea of a friendly conversation with your Alexa smart assistant, chances are you were sorely disappointed. Reports of the assistant not responding started to pile up this morning, with DownDetector showing that Alexa was down around 2am ET / 7am GMT on January 21, 2022.
Alexa now seems to have regained her voice and operational capabilities but many users across Europe reported a variety of issues with Amazon’s smart assistant.
Amazon Alexa reported issues:
Devices appearing “offline”
Blue ring flashing
A red light ring (rather than the normal blue)
“I'm having difficulty understanding right now” voice prompts
“Something has gone wrong" voice prompts
Slow to process requests
Amazon Alexa outage at DownDetector
The graph at DownDetector illustrates the outage pretty well with a nice spike and thousands of reports logged. It now appears that Alexa is back online but Echo speakers and other devices sporting the smart assistant were taken out for a good two hours.
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Alexa getting out of shape is not good news for Amazon, especially after the smart assistant was chosen to be an astronaut. Amazon and Lockheed Martin, a NASA contractor, announced in the beginning of January that Alexa would be a part of NASA's Artemis I space mission.
It’s a cargo mission with no squishy humans on board (just the silicon-clad Alexa) but going offline during a space mission is never a good thing.
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How are things on your end? Is your Alexa doing what she’s supposed to do?
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Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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