Amazon Takes on Google Gemini AI With Alexa+

We’ve been waiting a long time to see what Amazon was doing with its digital assistant. Alexa+ got all the fanfare today at an Amazon event. SVP of devices and services Panos Panay, formerly of Microsoft, debuted the next-generation edition of the shopping giant’s AI bot. Amazon hopes you’ll prefer Alexa+ over the other digital assistants in your home. Alexa+ promises all sorts of new interactions, many of which might seem like repeat offerings if you’ve already been living with this stuff in your home. After mentioning the wake word, you can converse with Alexa+ as you would with a friend, asking about the weather and then going into a conversation about what’s on the docket for the day. You could even ask it something contextual, like whether it saw any animals creep by on the Ring security cameras in the middle of the night. It’s all contingent on what you program into it beforehand, but the possibility exists, and the company wants you to think of your shopping app to interact wit ... Read full article.