Is Amazon Alexa down?
Alexa apparently wants Christmas Day off, at least in some parts of the world, according to reports from users who tried to connect to the voice assistant from their Amazon devices.
People reported issues trying to connect the Amazon Echo smart speaker to servers starting Christmas morning. On Twitter, Amazon's own Amazon Help account admitted that "some Echo devices in Europe have had intermittent connections," over two hours on Christmas morning, but stated that "issues have now been resolved and the Alexa Service is working normally."
Hi, over the past two hours some Echo devices in Europe have had intermittent connections. These issues have now been resolved and the Alexa Service is working normally.^MA
— Amazon Help (@AmazonHelp) December 25, 2018
However, tweets coming from users reported otherwise, as did outage reports from sites Down Detector and Outage Report, as of mid afternoon on the East Coast in the U.S. Heavy outages appear to be centered in Europe and across the U.K.
@AmazonHelp Any update on the current situation regarding #alexadown? She won't respond to me at all at the moment, and as this is my first day, I'm worried about turning it off and on again, in case it wipes the setup, which was problematic enough.
— Casey Bottono M.A. (@BottonoWriter) December 25, 2018
Alexa is the voice assistant that operates Amazon's smart speaker line of devices. The Amazon Echo was the first, debuting in 2015, followed by the its smaller device the Echo Dot in 2016. One of the more recent additions to the Alexa line includes the Echo Show, a hybrid video display and smart speaker that lets people also place video phone calls, as well as the new Echo Dot, which the company claimed was the top selling item purchased by people on its site, globally, over the long Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend.
