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Amazon’s generative AI-powered Alexa+ will pull from the Amazon Bedrock library of large language models to perform household tasks and answer natural language queries, Amazon announced on February 26. Amazon Alexa competes with Apple’s Siri, which recently received a generative AI upgrade on current-generation devices, and Google’s Gemini; even ChatGPT has robust mobile, voice, and agentic capabilities now.
Alexa+ will cost $19.99 per month, or come free with Amazon Prime. (We might expect the base price of Prime to increase in the near future, as Google increased the price of its Workspace applications when Gemini rolled out to all of them. On the other hand, companies offering the best of their generative AI for free is the new trend.) Alexa+ will enter early access in March, and it will work on existing Alexa hardware.
What is Alexa+?
Alexa+ is a generative AI assistant that can take multi-stage actions. Alexa’s voice will be more naturalistic with the update and will take into account the “emotional quotient,” trying to predict whether the user needs support or soothing by reading their voice and face. It will integrate with “tens of thousands of services” from brands in partnership with Amazon, according to reporting from the live event by The Verge. Partners mentioned in the initial announcement include Uber, Grubhub, OpenTable, Ticketmaster, Zoom, and Xbox. Naturally, it can also integrate with Amazon services to apply voice commands to platforms like Amazon Prime Video.
Alexa+ will be able to respond to images, remember users’ preferences and tastes, hold back-and-forth questions including quizzing the user, book restaurant reservations, or call rideshare cars. It will be able to visually “read” and answer questions about handwritten or printed material. The demo showed how Alexa+ can hook together different aspects of smart home technology, such as one member of a household asking Alexa whether anyone had walked the dog and Alexa+ sorting through camera feeds for the answer.
The Associated Press, Politico, Washington Post, and Reuters have entered into agreements with Amazon to provide answers about financial markets, sports, and news for Alexa+. It can also produce images, fiction, or music. As The Verge pointed out, the company through which the music is generated, Suno, is currently being sued by Universal, Warner, and Sony for copyright infringement.
Some of these capabilities involve handing enough personal information over to Amazon to potentially trigger security concerns. Users will need to share their home cameras, email, personal calendars, and more.
How does Alexa+ work?
Through Amazon Bedrock, Alexa will choose between available large language models depending on the query. Some of its queries will be handled through Amazon’s own Nova; some answers or capabilities are delegated to one of hundreds of models within the system designated as “experts.”
Alexa+ will integrate with a new phone app and Alexa.com.