https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/24/amazon-redesigns-the-echo-line-with-spherical-speakers-and-swiveling-screens/

Amazon today announced a lot of new products including the new Echo speaker line. And the products look dramatically different. Gone are the cylinders. They’re spheres now and look like nothing else on the market. The lights are now on the bottom, while there are still rounded buttons on the top.

The Alexa software got an upgrade, too. The new capabilities allow it to become more personalized as it can now ask clarifying questions and then use this personalized data to interact with the user later on. When you ask Alexa to set the temperature to your “favorite setting,” for example, she will now ask what that setting is. The real breakthrough, though, is the conversation mode. In today’s demo, the company showed how Alexa could work when you’re ordering a pizza, for example. One of the actors said she wasn’t that hungry and wanted a smaller pizza. Alexa automatically changed that order for her. The team calls this “natural turn taking.”