If Alexa’s in your home, you might’ve been one of many users this month who were suddenly moved from the original Alexa to the new AI-powered Alexa+ voice assistant.
Amazon announced in early January during CES that it'd be rolling out the new assistant to all Alexa+ Early Access customers, and that turns out to also include all Prime members, even if you weren't on the Early Access list.
Alexa+ is still in Early Access, as it has been since it launched in spring last year, meaning that the assistant isn't fully complete, nor is it requiring you to pay the $20 monthly fee if you don't have Prime. However, the waiting list is done, and it's become fully available. Even if you didn't want it, if you have Prime, Alexa+ and its new voice will start showing up on your device.
Here's what's going on and how you can switch back to the original Alexa voice—which is still not quite the same as it once was.
Amazon’s Forward Push
Courtesy of Amazon
Alexa+ is Amazon's new generation of the Alexa voice assistant, powered by artificial intelligence, promising more conversational responses, better understanding of complex requests, and serving more as a chatbot you can talk to rather than a digital butler you command.
If you have a display device like an Echo Show, it also turns the onscreen conversation into a text chat, akin to the ChatGPT app. Perhaps most noticeably, Alexa+ has a new default voice that people have described as a “sassy teen,” though you can technically switch back to the old voice. (More on that below.)
Part of the news announced at CES was that Alexa+ will also be widely available on Alexa.com if you want Alexa's help while you're using your browser. This is more of a move to compete with ChatGPT than it is something to help your day-to-day use of Alexa, but I guess it's nice if you're looking for a single AI service to use across smart home devices, apps, and the browser. Also, this cross-platform Alexa access is free if you have Prime, versus paying an additional fee for something like ChatGPT, but Amazon's assistant has yet to reach its full intended form and is not as capable as the competition right now.
Amazon says users were notified via email, in the Alexa app, and on Echo and Echo Show devices about upgrading from the basic Alexa to the new Alexa+. One WIRED staffer kept declining the upgrade and found it had forcibly pushed to her Echo Dot one morning, greeting her with a completely different voice, which she found intolerable.