Amazon's Alexa service seems to be broken.
Several members of the Pocket-lint team have noticed that Amazon Echo devices are not working correctly today, Friday 21 January 2022. Speaking into one Echo, for example, has another in the same household respond instead. If it works at all, that is.
Sometimes the device just stalls on the blue listening light or says "something is wrong". Sometimes it progresses with your command a minute or two after.
It's happening to a few of us in different locations and on different broadband providers, so doesn't seem to be an issue with internet connectivity. Alexa is also stumbling on non-Echo devices that support it, such as the Sonos Arc soundbar and speakers.
Amazon is yet to make an official announcement.
The issue seems to have started around 7am GMT, with downdetector showing spikes of complaints across Alexa and Amazon Web Services.
As things stand, Amazon's retail sites are still available. We don't have the Amazon Luna cloud gaming platform in the UK yet, so do not know if that is currently affected too.
We've reached out to Amazon to find out what the issue may be and will keep you updated with any further news on the issues.