AMAZON Alexa went down for thousands of users in a mystery outage on January 21, 2022.
Technical issues meant the virtual assistant did not respond to voice commands, leaving users unable to use their smart devices.
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What happened to Alexa?
Problems with the service began at around 7:00 a.m. GMT on January 21, according to online outage trackers.
More than 8,000 people have logged issues with Alexa on DownDetector, a website that monitors the status of online platforms.
According to user reports, Alexa is not responding to voice commands. Those trying to wake their Amazon Echo speakers are met with a red ring of light.
The gadgets show a solid red ring around their exterior when the microphone has been turned off or there is a fault with the device.
Videos on social media show Alexa devices announcing: “Sorry, this device lost its connection.”
On Twitter, users are claiming that they are unable to shut off their morning alarms or switch on their smart lights as a result of the outage.
It’s not clear what’s causing the problem with the virtual helper, which is powered by Amazon’s artificial intelligence technology.
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Reports suggest that Alexa is also down across parts of Europe and India. Users in the United States are thought to be unaffected by the outage.
Amazon has yet to acknowledge the outage on its official Alexa and customer support Twitter accounts.
The Sun has reached out to the company for comment.
How can I check if Alexa is down?
It’s fairly obvious when your own Alexa device is down, but figuring out whether the issue is widespread is decidedly trickier.
If there’s an error with Alexa, your Echo speaker will show a solid red ring around its exterior.
That’s the same signal it shows when you’ve turned the microphone off.
If you attempt to communicate with Alexa, the assistant will typically inform you that an error has occurred.
In the event of a connection error, for instance, the AI will say: “Sorry, this device lost its connection.”
There are no official channels through which to investigate whether the issue is specific to your device or is more widespread.
The first places to check would be DownDetector and social media platforms such as Twitter.
If you spot that lots of people are reporting issues with their Alexa devices, then you know that the fault likely lies with Amazon.
It’s also worth keeping an eye out on the Amazon Alexa and Amazon customer service Twitter pages.
Try shooting @AmazonHelp a message to see if they can troubleshoot the problem. You can also chat to customer service via Amazon’s website, here.
Previous Alexa outages
- January 21, 2022: Alexa goes down across Europe in mystery outage
- December 7, 2021: Amazon server outage causes problems for Alexa
- May 16, 2019: Users worldwide report issues with Echo speakers
- September 26, 2018: “System issues” lead to hours-long downtime
- March 2, 2018: Digital assistant experiences U.S. outage
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
