Panos Panay, Amazon’s head of devices and services, believes the reign of the smartphone screen may be nearing a tipping point. Speaking at Fortune Brainstorm AI in San Francisco, he suggested that a growing fatigue with social media “doom scrolling” is paving the way for a new era of “ambient intelligence”—one driven by a generation that interacts with technology in fundamentally different ways,.
According to Panay, the future of consumer technology isn’t about better apps, but about making the technology disappear into the background.
“There’s a whole younger generation coming up that I think at some point they get tired of doom scrolling,” he observed, noting that many young people feel “stuck” when it comes to social media. He argued that this demographic, having been raised in an emerging “AI world,” will demand interactions that bypass the friction of traditional computing.
“They’re going to just think differently,” Panay predicted. “You’ve got to make sure you have products in their pockets, on their bodies, in their homes that they don’t expect… [but] expect to connect seamlessly.”
The death of the ‘app’ experience
Panay described a user experience that eliminates the need to look at a screen to solve daily problems. “It’s such a joy because there’s no opening a phone, opening the app, clicking, finding … none of it,” he said. “You just ask the question and you get it back”.
He illustrated this shift with a personal anecdote about a family debate over which restaurant to visit. Rather than everyone retreating to their corners to stare at their phones—a moment that usually disrupts family connection—they simply asked Alexa. The AI recalled a conversation from months prior regarding a restaurant they had wanted to try, settling the debate instantly. “It’s such a simple, delightful moment of when ambient intelligence is around you,” Panay noted.
To support this screen-free future, Amazon is aggressively experimenting with new hardware. While Panay declined to get into specific product roadmaps, he hinted that the current smart speakers and phones are not the endgame.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the next form factor yet on where AI devices are going to go,” he said, adding that Amazon has a “lab full of ideas,” though most ideas won’t make it from prototype to reality.
When pressed on whether Amazon would release wearables or glasses to compete with recent partnerships like that of OpenAI and Jony Ive’s io, Panay pointed to Amazon’s portfolio, including the recent acquisition of a company that makes a wristband. “We have wearables, we have earbuds, we’ve had glasses in the past.” He added that he won’t reveal what’s coming next, but insisted, “I think you’re going to want your assistant with you everywhere you go.”
Security concerns come hand in hand with these sort of advances, too. When asked by an audience member about the risks of placing listening devices in homes, Panay described security as a non-negotiable agreement. “I feel like it’s a contract with our customers, period. We break that contract, we lose our customers.” He emphasized that Amazon does not “cut one corner” regarding security protocols, describing it as the “first premise” of their product design.
The New ‘Alexa Plus‘
The bridge to this ambient future is the newly updated “Alexa Plus,” which Panay describes as a shift from a command-based tool to a comprehensive “home manager” and “butler.” Unlike “legacy Alexa,” which often required users to navigate complex setups, the new AI possesses “unlimited depth of understanding” and contextual memory.
“If I’ve asked it two or three questions in the last couple of weeks … the understanding, the personality will just change and say it understands what I’m looking for,” he explained.
For Panay, the ultimate goal is to return time to the user, moving them away from the distraction of screens and toward meaningful activity. “I think learning is one of the finest arts on the planet … and I think reading does that,” he said, positioning the shift away from doom scrolling as not just a technological evolution, but a cultural one.
