Alexa Gets an Artificial Intelligence Update
Are you ready to pay for Amazon Alexa? With the addition of AI to the assistant , Amazon thinks you …
Amazon’s Alexa+, announced today in a private meeting with press and business partners, adds artificial intelligence to the familiar digital assistant, along with a new price of $20 per month. Secret? If you have Prime, you’ll have access to it at no additional cost.
Like standard Alexa, the assistant is built around voice prompts, but is designed to be more conversational and personalized, and will presumably be able to act on your behalf and integrate with partner apps including Hulu, Uber and Xbox.
It also brings new features to Amazon’s own apps like Prime video or Ring and should make smart home integration easier.
Amazon didn’t cover every potential use case at its event, presumably because there are so many , but here are a few key ones:
-
More complex questions : By asking Alexa+ a question, as with other artificial intelligence, you can continue the conversation without multiple prompts or repeating yourself with each new prompt. For example, you can tell Alexa that one of your family members is vegetarian, and any recipe suggestions she makes for them for the rest of the conversation will take that into account.
-
Multimodality : Alexa+ can use photos as input or view uploaded documents and provide a summary of them.
-
Create new routines using your voice . Instead of setting up new smart home automation systems using a complex app, you can do it verbally. For example, you can tell Alexa once to remember to turn off the lights when you close the garage door, and from then on she will do so.
-
Jump to a specific Prime Video scene : Alexa+ will be able to use details like scene descriptions or actor names to take you to a specific moment in a specific piece of content in Prime Video. In a press release, Amazon claims that a line like “What is that movie where Bradley Cooper sings a duet?” Go to this scene…” will be enough to start playback.
-
Ring powered by artificial intelligence . People with a Ring subscription will be able to ask Alexa+ to summarize saved footage and show you the highlights, and use Smart Video Search to find specific moments simply by describing them to Alexa, i.e. saying, “When was the last time I took out the trash cans?”
While all of this is designed to make Alexa much more powerful (assuming it works), it’s also not too different from existing AI solutions. Alexa is going to take things a step further and start doing things similar to what was promised by the Rabbit R1 . Amazon says you can use it to order groceries, find event tickets, make reservations, or order an Uber, among other things.
This is thanks to the partner integrations mentioned earlier. Supposedly, dozens of such partnerships are in place and ready to go, including various news outlets such as Time or The Washington Post, which should help make the assistant’s answers more accurate. As for the actions, although they are said to be hands-free, it looks like Alexa will ask for confirmation before making any final purchases or bookings.
Likewise, Alexa+ can also integrate with Amazon Kids+, using artificial intelligence to communicate with children using facts or interactive games and stories. Amazon promises “additional safety measures for younger users,” although details are not yet known.
Like many things about Alexa+. Amazon promises transparency and privacy here, accessible through the Alexa Privacy dashboard, and is surprisingly open about the technology behind Alexa+—a combination of its own models and Anthropic. But it won’t be long before you can try out the updated assistant, which opens for early access sometime next month.
One surprise is that there are no new devices here , with Alexa+ compatible with “nearly every” shipping Echo device, though the company says early access will first appear on the Echo Show 8, 10, 15 and 21. Presumably the web app and 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+ does anything to move the needle for me. But I haven’t seen much of it yet. I tend to be a little more hands-on 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 okay with passing that data to Amazon, and that Amazon makes it easy to do.