Alexa+, Amazon’s upgraded, generative AI-powered version of its Alexa assistant, is available to all U.S. customers as of Wednesday. The company said that the AI feature will be free to Prime members across devices. Meanwhile, anyone can use Alexa+ for free via the Alexa website or mobile app, with some limitations.
“We have tens of millions of customers using Alexa+ now, and now we’re going to make it available to all Prime members…Prime members enjoy unlimited access — it’s basically a paid tier level of access that we’re including in Prime now,” notes Daniel Rausch, VP of Alexa and Echo at Amazon, in an interview with TechCrunch.
Announced last year, Alexa+ is model agnostic — meaning it runs on a combination of Amazon’s own foundation models and those from other companies, allowing the assistant to do more than the basic tasks of its predecessor using whatever AI technology is best for the job.
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As an AI assistant, Alexa+ can carry on natural language conversations that include follow-up questions and back-and-forth chat.
In addition to performing smart home tasks, scheduling timers, or offering news and weather, as before, the new assistant can do most things that other AI chatbots can do — like planning an itinerary for a trip, updating a shared calendar, finding and saving recipes to a library, making movie recommendations, helping with homework, exploring a topic, and more.
Plus, integrations with services like Ticketmaster, Thumbtack, Uber, Angi, Expedia, Square, Yelp, Fodor’s, OpenTable, and Suno will allow Alexa to perform more complex tasks, like scheduling a dinner reservation or requesting an Uber ride. Amazon has not yet shared user adoption numbers on this more “agentic” use case (where the AI acts autonomously to complete tasks) for the AI helper.
During its year-long beta testing period, Alexa customers had the option to try the AI feature or roll back to the prior version. The company tells TechCrunch the option to revert to the old Alexa will continue to be available, but couldn’t say for how long. Likely, Amazon wants a bit more time to improve the AI experience before making it a requirement for users. The percentage of those opting out is also a key metric to track, but Rausch notes that the figure is in the low single digits, suggesting that most customers are not so unhappy with Alexa+ that they’re giving up.
Image Credits:Amazon
Still, Amazon has had to work to resolve bugs and address user feedback ahead of this launch. Some beta testers complained that Alexa+ was too chatty, or interrupted at the wrong times, for instance. Others complained about Alexa’s new voice.
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