It's also not entirely clear what Alexa was suppose to do, nor Siri for that matter. Being a personal digital assistant turned out to be much less useful than many imagined and being a voice controlled Bluetooth speaker is mostly a gimmick outside the car or kitchen.
That's not to say that Alexa and others can't be useful, but just not to enough people that it justifies the R&D cost.
Meanwhile multiple non-technical people that I know pay $20/mo to OpenAI and have long, verbal conversations with ChatGPT every day to learn new things, explore ideas, reflect, etc.
These are obviously what voice assistants should do, the research was just not there. Amazon was unwilling to invest in the long-term research to make that a reality, because of a myopic focus on easy-to-measure KPIs. After pouring billions of dollars into Alexa. A catastrophic management failure.
Are they talking to ChatGPT, or are they typing? More and more we're seeing that user don't even want to use a phone for phone calls, so maybe a voice interface really isn't the way to go.
Edit: Oh, you wrote "verbal" that seems weird to me. Most people I know certainly don't want to talk to their devices.
My wife paid for ChatGPT and is loving it - she only types to it so far (and sends it images and screenshots), but I've had a go at talking to it and it was much better than I thought.
If I'm alone I don't mind talking if it is faster, but there is no way I'm talking to AI in the office or on the train (yet...)
I struggle to have naturally flowing conversation with an AI for much the same reason people don't use most of Siri's features - it's awkward and feels strange.
As such I can maintain about five minutes of slow pace before giving up and typing. I have to believe others have similar experiences. But perhaps I'm an outlier.
I continue to be baffled that they are going to cannibalize the "voice controlled radio and timer" market in the chase of some "magic assistant" one.
It would be one thing if they were just adding extra "smart home" features to connect new terminals. I can see benefit of some of the smart screen calendar and weather things. No, they seem dead set to completely kill what they had.
That's not to say that Alexa and others can't be useful, but just not to enough people that it justifies the R&D cost.