Alexa Is Getting an AI Upgrade

Are you ready to pay for Amazon Alexa? With the addition of AI to the assistant, Amazon thinks you are.

Announced in a closed-doors meeting with press and business partners today, Amazon’s Alexa+ is bringing AI to the familiar digital assistant, plus a new $20/month price tag. The secret? If you have Prime, you’ll get access to it at no extra charge.

Credit: Amazon

As with standard Alexa, the assistant is built around vocal prompts, but is designed to be more conversational and personalized, and will supposedly be able to act on your behalf and integrate with partner apps including Hulu, Uber, and Xbox.

It also enables new features in Amazon’s own apps, like Prime video or Ring, and should make smart home integration simpler.

Amazon didn’t go over every potential use case at its event, seemingly because there are so many, but a few key ones include:

• More complex questions: When asking Alexa+ a question, as with other AI, you’ll be able to keep a conversation going without multiple prompts or repeating yourself in each new prompt. For instance, you could tell Alexa that one of your family members is vegetarian, and any recipe suggestions it makes for them for the rest of the conversation will take that into account.

• Multimodality: Alexa+ is able to use photos as input, or peruse uploaded documents and provide summaries of them.

• Create new routines by voice: Rather than having to set up new smart home automations through a complicated app, you’ll be able to do them verbally. For example, you could tell Alexa once to remember to turn off the lights when you close the garage door, and it'll do that from that moment onward.

• Jump to a specific Prime Video scene: Alexa+ will be able to use details such as scene descriptions or actor names to take you to a specific moment in a specific piece of content within Prime Video. In a press release, Amazon claims that saying something like “what’s that movie where Bradley Cooper sings a duet? Jump to that scene…” will be enough to start it playing.

• AI-powered Ring: People with Ring subscriptions will be able to ask Alexa+ to summarize saved footage and show you highlights, plus use “Smart Video Search” to find specific moments just by describing them to Alexa, i.e. by saying “When did I last take out the trash bins?”

While that’s all set to make Alexa much more powerfuln (assuming it works) it’s also not too different from existing AI solutions. Where Alexa is set to go a step beyond is in taking action, in a way similar to what was promised by the Rabbit R1. Amazon says you could use it to order groceries, find event tickets, set up reservations, or book an Uber, among other things. 

Credit: Amazon

That’s thanks to those partner integrations mentioned earlier. Supposedly, there are dozens of these partnerships set up and ready to go, including various news outlets like Time or The Washington Post, which should help make the assistant’s answers more accurate. As for actions, while it’s said to be hands-free, it seems like Alexa will ask for confirmation before actually making any final purchases or bookings.

Similarly, Alexa+ is also set to integrate with Amazon Kids+, using AI to converse with kids using facts or interactive games and stories. Amazon promises “extra safety guardrails for younger users,” although details are still light at the moment.

Credit: Amazon

As is a lot about Alexa+. Amazon is promising transparency and privacy here, accessible via the Alexa Privacy dashboard, and has been surprisingly open about the technology powering Alexa+—it’s a combination of in-house models and Anthropic. But it’ll be a bit before you get to try out the upgraded assistant, with early access set for sometime next month. 

One surprise is that there are no new devices here, with Alexa+ instead being compatible with “almost every” shipped Echo device, although the company says that early access will come first to the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21. Supposedly, the web and a new phone app will also get Alexa+, although it’s unclear when.

Personally, I’ve always been a little skeptical of Alexa and its always-on microphones, and I can’t say Alexa+ is doing anything to move the needle for me. But I also haven’t seen much of it yet. I tend to be a bit more practical-minded when it comes to what I’m willing to use AI for, so we’ll see if Alexa+ can change my mind when I finally get my hands on it—its ability to automatically turn emails into calendar events does seem pretty handy, assuming you’re fine handing that data over to Amazon, and that Amazon makes it easy to do so.

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