Amazon's Alexa gets a new AI upgrade

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Amazon has revealed its revamped version of Alexa powered by generative AI, which is free for Amazon Prime members and $19.99 a month for non-Prime users. It will be available from March to select users and will be rolled out to more customers over time. According to the tech firm, the new Alexa AI service will now be able to respond to multiple prompts in sequence, compared to just one single request at a time with the current version.

Alexa+ is also able to act as an "agent” by taking actions for users without their direct involvement. Amazon added that the voice assistant will use the best AI model available for a given task using Bedrock, the company’s machine learning platform used to build genAI applications.

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Amazon said the new Alexa can store customer preferences through prompts, such as remembering that a household member is vegetarian and makes dinner reservations suitable for the diet. It can also connect to Ring doorbells, and review documents like housing contracts.

During the Alexa+ launch in New York, Amazon executives also presented the voice assistant’s other capabilities such as ordering food, smart home connections and video streaming, reported by Reuters.

The launch video also touted that the voice assistant could take on the roles of being a users’ new concierge, sous chef, house manager, and assistant on the go or at home.

A quick listen by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE found the voice to also be slightly different from the one consumers are more familiar with.

However, Alexa+ is still expected to face strong competition from Apple and Google, as Reuters reported that Amazon executives had to repeat their prompts to Alexa+ more than once to get a response during the presentation.

Meanwhile, a Washington Post report highlighted that that the launch of the new Alexa went through a series of delays after Amazon first announced the upgrade back in September 2023. An Amazon employee told the news outlet that the delay was due to the new version of the assistant giving incorrect answers to test questions.

Alexa was first introduced over a decade ago, three years after the launch of Apple’s Siri.