Amazon has sent around a slew of cryptic invitations to an event on February 26 that hints at something big. The biggest clue? The blue used in the announcement photo.
Amazon’s being coy with it, as the range of blues range from navy to sky blue, but streaked most prominently across it is a shade that looks awfully close to Alexa Blue, which Amazon uses across its branding for Alexa Devices.
Why use it if the upcoming announcement has nothing to do with Alexa? Well, there could be a few reasons. Let’s dissect them, and then I’ll tell you why I still think the announcement signals that the big news coming at the end of the month is the next generation of Alexa.
amazon uses blue more than you think
Amazon’s use of blue alone isn’t enough to hone in on one area of the company or another. Blue shows up in several key product and service ranges across Amazon.
One in which you’ll find splashes of electric blue everywhere is Amazon Prime, Amazon’s membership program. Could that be what the big announcement is about? Probably not.
The invitation Amazon sent out mentions the February 26 event being focused specifically on Amazon devices, and it makes a point of saying that members of Amazon’s Devices and Services Design Group, including the division’s senior vice president, Panos Panay, will be in attendance. So that seemingly rules out Amazon Prime, which isn’t a device.
Likewise for Amazon Upfront, an event that promotes opportunities to would-be advertisers. It prominently features electric blue, too. And Prime Video, while we’re at it, though the shade is a bit different. But I don’t think the announcement concerns these either.
Amazon last updated Alexa in 2023, and skipped its traditional fall hardware event because of rumors that the upcoming Alexa was acting up and posing problems for the developers. So Alexa and its Echo devices, which prominently feature Echo Blue, are due for attention.
AI has moved at a breakneck pace since 2023, and ever since ChatGPT rolled out to the general public at the end of 2022, we’ve been wondering how its advances would be rolled into AI voice assistants like Alexa.
Three weeks from today, I wager we’ll find out. Generative AI (such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek) has been massively disruptive and fairly impressive, in many cases more nimble and capable than the voice assistants, such as Alexa and Siri, that we’ve been living with.
It’s only a matter of time before the former are merged into the latter to pad out their capabilities. We can’t wait to see how, and if Amazon can deliver.
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