At an event in New York City last week, Amazon presented the long awaited next generation of its Alexa assistant — creatively known as Alexa+.
Alexa+ is based on four pillars, according to the company:
- Conversational – to feel more natural and not like a traditional electronic assistant.
- Personalized – engineered to understand your individual needs and learn new ones as they arise.
- Action-Oriented – it can act on your behalf, for example by shopping and making plans for you.
- Smarter – designed to be knowledgeable and approachable for users.
Here's what else we know about Alexa+:
- Alexa+ is based on generative AI and a more natural conversational UI, the goal being for users to move away from “Alexa Speak” towards a new type of conversational engagement that feels more natural and expressive.
- Users will be able to do things via voice commands like shift music being played from one room to another, query video recordings for things like package deliveries and letting pets out, skip to specific scenes in movies, and even send event invites.
- Users can build shopping lists, tapping into services like Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods apps to make ordering easier.
- Users will also be able to bring their own recipes into Alexa+ to make shopping for meals easier.
- Amazon says that Alexa+ can tap into “tens of thousands” of other services and devices to take actions for customers, including with OpenTable, Dyson, Plex, Samsung, Xbox, and Hulu.
- For online services that don't have API, Alexa+ should be able to visit and navigate their websites on your behalf, similar to OpenAI Operator.
- Overtime, Alexa+ should be able to learn which apps to use based on the users' profile and specific intent.
- Alexa+ will cost $19.99/month if subscribed to by itself, or it'll be provided free to Amazon Prime users, which makes Prime a no brainer at $139/year if a customer wanted to access Alexa+.
- Early access will begin in March exclusively in the US, beginning with the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 devices.
- Amazon is refreshing the alexa.com website and the Alexa mobile app so that Alexa+ subscribers will be able to use the service via those channels in addition to their Echo devices.
Amazon VP of Alexa and Fire TV, Daniel Rausch, told WIRED, “The reason that customers love Alexa is it takes away all the complexity.” People don't need to remember the brand of the WeMo plug they bought, for example, to be able to tell Alexa to turn off a lamp. “We would never take that away,” and in fact, Amazon hopes to make adding new services and devices even easier, with Alexa helping to walk you through the setups.
Amazon may be late to the gen AI assistant party, but it's intimate knowledge of its customers purchase history and homes, its existing relationship with tens of thousands of APIs, and its direct placement into the homes of millions of customers via Echo devices, may mean that Alexa+ was worth the wait. We'll find out soon…