Is Amazon having a Super Bowl déjà vu? Alexa unresponsive after server outage

Remember when, during the Super Bowl last month, Amazon came up with amazing advertisements where its virtual assistant Alexa lost her voice and some famous celebrities like Gordon Ramsay, Rebel Wilson and Anthony Hopkins took the responsibility of replacing it and responding to Alexa owners?

The premise of those advertisements has become reality to an extent now, with Alexa becoming unresponsive all over the world and the voice only saying that Alexa's connection to the server has been lost. 

This problem with Alexa was first reported around 3:39 am EST. The number of complaints then rose to more than 1,000. Around 53 percent users said the problem was caused because of lack of connection to the server, while 38 percent blamed the log-in process of the Alexa.

Around 8 percent reported the problem on some official forums and other websites. But users are still able to control their smart appliances via the Alexa app.

Alexa has reportedly become unresponsive because of a widespread server outage. Some users are not getting any response from Alexa, and for some it's giving some irregular answers. But, there are also some lucky users who are not affected by the problem because there is no outage in some small pockets.

Users have encountered the blue ring on the Amazon smart speaker, which remains lit for around 15 seconds without Alexa answering anything. After that, the Alexa voice says it has lost its connection. Along with that users can also get a red light with Alexa's voice asking them to try later.

All of this is happening because of ongoing issues with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Numerous applications that rely on AWS have encountered downtime due to the issue.

A user has twitted that he spoke with Amazon's support about the Alexa issue. And the company has confirmed that it was a known issue, which will be resolved within the next two hours. 

Chatting with @amazonecho support on their website, they say it's a known issue and should be resolved in ~2 hours. Alexa support knows about the issue - reflected by an 18 minute hold time for phone support. Just no one has posted anything on the @Amazon website or on Twitter.

— Daniel Pentecost (@davoice) March 2, 2018