Alexa Amazon suffers a widespread failure

Alexa of Amazon has not been very helpful on Wednesday afternoon for many users across the United States.

Instead of serving the usual information on music, news or on-demand weather, the voice assistant and the clever gadget for the home have emerged as a stumbling block for users in several US cities, including New York, Boston and San Francisco. The breakdown appeared to have started around 4:45 pm. PT, based on user feedback on Twitter.

When asked to perform a task, she replied by: "Sorry, I have problems, please try a little while."

The problem was fixed at 5:30 pm

"This afternoon, we had a problem that affected the ability of some Alexa customers to interact with the service," said a spokeswoman for Amazon. "The Alexa service is now working normally."

The problem appeared a few hours later Sonos confirmed users had difficulty reading Spotify via Alexa and Google Assistant after a crash.

Originally released on May 15 at 17:08. PT.
Update, 5:40 pm: Adds an Amazon declaration.