Amazon’s Alexa is finally getting its promised AI makeover with Alexa+, and already the online retail giant is promising the moon by baking in LLMs into practically every one of its user-end products. Will Amazon finally offer the first real AI assistant that every company and their corporate mother has promised for the last two years? Perhaps, but that depends on whether you are willing to dive headfirst into Amazon’s hardware and software ecosystem.
Amazon on Wednesday showed us a slew of promised features. Amazon said the chatbot won’t just talk to you about your problems or offer bad pizza joint recommendations. It will interact with your interconnected smart home devices to easily set routines or sift through footage from your outdoor cameras. Amazon’s AI has image recognition capabilities that allow it to comprehend what happens in front of your Ring cameras or comprehend your emails or recipes. It also has the ability to work with Prime Video and cast to Fire TV, which could help the Amazon-owned James Bond infiltrate your screens big and small.
Alexa+ will come out for some select users next month and will see a staggered release for all users. If you have Amazon Prime already, you’ll get access, but otherwise it will cost $20 per month. The AI will operate on Echo Show devices at first, including the more-recent Show 15 and 21, before supporting Amazon Fire TVs. Support on third-party devices sporting Amazon’s OS will come at a later date. There’s a lot going on, so let’s break it down.
Alexa+ Will Include Both a Website and App
In the next few weeks, a reconfigured Alexa.com will host the company’s AI-powered assistant. This will work in tandem with a revised Alexa app, which will replace the current application. Amazon did not show off much of what the UI on this website or app might look like, though the company demoed some features for controlling the food ordering capabilities similar to how it works on Echo. The app and website should be rolling out alongside the staggered, wider Alexa+ release.
Amazon’s AI Should Remember All Your Documents, Should You Choose to Share Them
Alexa users should be able to upload any number of documents, emails, screenshots, or hand-written notes to Amazon’s AI for it to “remember” any dates, people, or pertinent details for you. This is similar to features in Google’s Gemini, but you can also specifically ask the AI to “remember” certain events for you to call up at a later time. The easiest way to give the AI access to these documents is by sharing them to the Alexa app whenever the AI update arrives. Amazon told us you should be able to share emails associated with your Amazon account, though you can also connect separate accounts through the app.
Amazon’s AI Is Connected to an Expansive Number of Apps
Amazon promised Alexa+ won’t just work with Amazon products, but “tens of thousands” of apps and services. Amazon counts news organizations like the Associated Press and Reuters among that number, so the actual number of APK-connected apps is far fewer than that. Still, included are apps like Uber, OpenTable, Thumbtack, Vizio, Tidal, Xbox, and many, many more. It’s unclear what exact connections each app may entail, but Amazon did show how it could book a car trip on Uber and set up a calendar appointment through Thumbtack, all through the same UI.
Amazon Wants to Reimagine How You Order Food Online
If I want to make a pizza at home, Amazon’s Alexa+ can do the hard part of searching for ingredients. Asking Alexa+ for ingredients first takes you to a separate cut-out menu, then as you talk about your wants and desires, Alexa will form a list of possible ingredients. Amazon told us this defaults to what you normally prefer to order based on your Amazon account, but you can modify numbers and brands either with your voice or by selecting each product that comes up. The AI was surprisingly capable at figuring out when I wanted a non-cheap bottle of olive oil or if I wanted to make my own pizza dough rather than muddle through with store-brand pre-made dough.
Easily Pass Your Audio to Specific Speakers Around the Home
In one demo, Amazon’s VP of devices and services, Panos Panay, showed how you can ask Alexa+ to play audio through specific speakers set up around your room. This was accomplished with two sections of Echo Speakers, though it should supposedly work with any range of smart home speakers.
Alexa+ Can Set Smart Home Routines and Timers With Your Voice
If you’ve already gone through the trouble of segmenting your home with various smart displays, smart lights, and any number of interconnected devices, then Alexa+ promises to make setting routines far easier. In a demo, Amazon showed how one could set a timer to turn down lights at a certain time of day or set mood lighting for certain scenarios. The AI should be able to comprehend what you want even if you don’t know the exact names of different lighting fixtures around the home. This may make it easier for people who didn’t set up those devices to change their routines.
The New Alexa AI Will Comprehend What’s Happening in Front of Your Cameras
The Amazon Nova group of AI foundation models includes a fair amount of image and video vision capabilities. This works best with Amazon-owned Ring products, as the AI can not only comprehend what’s happening in real time, but it can spool back through recorded video if you wanted to know if a package arrived or if a member of your household remembered to walk the dog that day. This imaging capabilities will also work with the built-in cameras on Echo Show products or any interconnected camera setup, though company representatives told us the AI may not have the ability to look back through footage on third-party devices.
Alexa Can Help Scatterbrains Guess What Movie They’re Thinking Of
Those of us who can’t seem to build a coherent thought at the end of a work day may get a little help from Amazon’s new AI products. Alexa+ can supposedly help you figure out what movie scene you’re thinking of. For example, if you ask it for the name of the movie with the “sparkling vampires,” it should bring up one of the four Twilight movies. While Amazon’s Echo devices will be first to use Alexa+, those devices can still cast your music or video content to a FireTV without any need to pick up a remote. At the start, Alexa+ won’t have any Shazam-like capabilities to identify music based on what you’re listening to. The company said that’s something it’s looking at for a future addition.
There’s a Child-Friendly Version of Alexa+
Amazon Kids+ subscribers will get new features with “Stories by Alexa” and “Explore with Alexa.” This essentially adds a chatbot to the company’s existing “storytelling” interface, so if you wanted your Echo devices to offer an AI-generated bedtime story of a lizard wizard with accompanying ugly AI-generated art, then it should be capable of that. Otherwise, the AI should have the ability to answer questions to satiate your children’s curiosity, though judging by previous AI chatbots, we are hesitant to trust its accuracy or reliability.