Amazon Unveils Smarter Alexa+ Voice Assistant with Generative AI

Amazon has finally released the long-awaited version of its Alexa+ voice AI assistant powered by generative AI, which can control a smart home, suggest travel routes, check homework, order groceries, and invite friends to dinner. The manufacturer claims that Alexa+ can remember and take into account the owner’s personal preferences in food, music, cinema, and other areas.

Image source: Amazon

Alexa+, according to the manufacturer, can support a full-fledged conversation, responding to the word “Alexa” spoken by the owner. It has machine vision, can take photos and analyze images. At the presentation, Amazon demonstrated how Alexa+ tells about the availability of concert tickets, provides information about local businesses and makes restaurant reservations. The company claims that the new Alexa can study a textbook and then check the completion of homework. Users can also use Alexa+ to plan trips and create routes.

Here’s how Amazon marketers describe the benefits of the updated Alexa+:

• Conversational: Alexa+ engages in natural, fluid conversations that feel authentic. It understands context and meaning, creating seamless interactions.
• Personalized: Alexa+ learns from you, and the more you use it, the more personalized it becomes — understanding everything from your favorite entertainment to your family’s dietary preferences, allergies, and weekly routines.
• Gets things done: Alexa+ acts on your behalf, handling everything from planning dates and buying gifts to arranging trips and helping with schoolwork. From simple tasks to complex projects, she provides help you can trust.
• Even smarter: Alexa+ combines deep knowledge with an approachable personality, making generative AI feel natural and approachable. Helpful intelligence is ready whenever and wherever you need it.

Amazon first announced that it was going to “augment” Alexa with artificial intelligence in September 2023. The company made a lot of big claims at the time, promising that Alexa would understand context or create automated routines for its owner. But a year later, it turned out that development was stalling, and some employees were leaving, having lost faith in the feasibility of the project. During the development of Alexa+, Amazon’s device team underwent a major personnel change: long-time team leader Dave Limp was replaced by Panos Panay, who previously led the creation of Surface devices at Microsoft.

The updated Alexa+ architecture is based on the large language models (LLM) introduced in Amazon Bedrock and the concept of “experts” — specialized systems that combine APIs, services, and devices to perform specific tasks. Alexa+ can control a smart home (Philips Hue, Roborock), book services (OpenTable, Vagaro), interact with music platforms (Spotify, Apple Music), order food (Grubhub, Uber Eats) and groceries (Amazon Fresh), and can also work with services like Ticketmaster and Ring. The key innovation is agent capabilities: Alexa+ autonomously performs complex tasks, authenticating itself to third-party services, organizing processes, and notifying the user of the result without their intervention.

Early access to Alexa+ will be available next month. It will cost $19.99 per month and will be free for Amazon Prime members, which is a better deal since Prime only costs $15 per month or $139 per year. Amazon confirmed that Alexa+ will work on “almost all” Alexa devices released so far, starting with the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21.

With Alexa+, Amazon is entering a highly competitive digital assistant market that is vastly different from the one that Alexa debuted in 2014. The leaders in this market are OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and, to a lesser extent, Apple’s Siri. The only opportunity for Alexa+ is that the three leaders have virtually no AI applications in smart speakers.