Amazon Alexa goes AWOL for many users
Some Amazon Alexa users are currently having problems reaching the voice assistant. Instead of reacting to commands, Alexa simply says “sorry, something went wrong.” Amazon hasn’t commented publicly yet on the issue.
Based on tweets and Down Detector, users began having trouble reaching Alexa around 7AM PST. While some had their connection issues resolved quickly, many others are still waiting.
#AlexaDown ! Now I have to remember how to turn the lights on and off again!
— Erin Boyle (@erinboyle05) October 24, 2018
@amazonecho what’s up with Alexa? She seems under the weather. #alexadown #alexanotrreliable
— Holly Ross Tong (@USAHollyRT) October 24, 2018
I would like to apologize to #alexa users worldwide for the 80 times my 6 year old requested “what does the fox say” today which surely caused the outage. She was right to shut down. Enough is enough. I hope @amazon can fix her. #alexadown
— Amy Gail (@AmyGail8) October 24, 2018
This follows an outage last month that mainly affected Echo devices in parts of the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and Australia. According to Down Detector’s outage map, however, most of the users who currently can’t reach Alexa are in the United States.
Alexa also suffered an outage in March after an Amazon Web Services networking issue.
TechCrunch has contacted Amazon for comment.