--- title: "Microsoft CEO Trashes Siri and Alexa for Being “Dumb as a Rock”" description: "\"They were all dumb as a rock,\" Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, told the FT last month, speaking to digital assistants like Cortana, Siri, and Alexa." date: "2023-03-08" modified: "2023-03-08" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/microsoft-ceo-siri-alexa-dumb-ai" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "Alexa" - "digital assistants" - "microsoft" - "the digest" --- # Microsoft CEO Trashes Siri and Alexa for Being “Dumb as a Rock” !["They were all dumb as a rock," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, told the FT last month, speaking to digital assistants like Cortana, Siri, and Alexa.]() *\Image: Amazon / Futurism\* ## One Falls, Another Rises As language-modeling AIs continue their rise to dominance, a new-old victim to the tech might be emerging: voice assistants. According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that is. As the scope and impact of Amazon's recent layoffs — which [reportedly hit]() Amazon's Alexa division quite seriously — come further into focus, *[The Financial Times]()*[ has revealed]() that in an interview last month, Nadella went absolutely off on the voice assistants of the 2010s, basically just saying that, well, they're not too bright. "They were all dumb as a rock," Nadella reportedly told the *FT* last month, speaking to the digital assistants — Microsoft's own, Cortana, included — that are currently available on the market. "Whether it's Cortana or Alexa or Google Assistant or Siri," he added, "all these just don't work." In other words: while the hype was clearly real, considering that Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple all had their version of a digital assistant — Amazon, notably, had sold [100 million Alexa units]() by November 2019 — the models just didn't live up to their original hype. ## I'm Not Dead Yet Though the *FT* didn't note whether Nadella, who in 2016 had declared that "[bots are the new apps]()" while demoing Cortana, was overtly comparing digital assistants to Microsoft's newer, OpenAI-powered Bing Search, it certainly seems that way. And to Nadella's credit, in a lot of ways Bing Search is already more advanced than the Siris and Alexas of yesteryear. If you ask Siri, for example, to build a workout plan for you from scratch, it can't — it can only find a pre-made program online via conventional search. Bing Search and its OpenAI-built brother ChatGPT, on the other hand, could both construct some kind of workout plan — or grocery list, or travel itinerary, and so on — for you by remixing relevant content that it can locate in its training material. Elsewhere, currently-integrated digital assistants are difficult to monetize post-purchase, and the [data-mining]() of it all aside, they don't exactly have the sci-fi feel that their architects imagined. That said, though, according to the *FT* report, it looks like Microsoft competitors have their eyes on using generative AI tools to level up their existing digital assistant models. "Fundamentally, \[generative AI\] will enable that breadth and flexibility and complexity that has not existed with the previous generation of voice assistants," Siri co-creator Adam Cheyer told the *FT*. "I think there will be a renaissance." Heard that, folks? They're [not dead yet]()! **READ MORE:** [*Amazon's big dreams for Alexa fall short*]() \[*The Financial Times*\] **More on Amazon:** [*Amazon Begs Employees Not to Leak Corporate Secrets to ChatGPT*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()