Amazon’s Alexa+ Event: What’s New and What It Means
Multimodal, Agentic Interactions
Powered by LLMs, Alexa+ can now process visual information via your device’s cameras to understand and answer questions. In one instance, Alexa was asked to describe the crowd’s excitement and enthusiasm at the event by leveraging the Echo Show 15’s front-facing camera. While its responses were two to three sentences long, they were descriptive and dictated in a fairly approachable tone.
The agentic capabilities of Alexa+ extend to browsing, with the ability to navigate the internet via Alexa.com and complete tasks for you on Amazon-partnered websites. For example, Alexa was asked to book a professional repairman for a damaged appliance. It then searched for a nearby repair service and booked an appointment via Thumbtack.
Conversational Chain of Commands
Besides responding more naturally, with sprinkles of humor, another big unveiling showed how Alexa can now fulfill tasks throughout your daily apps and services, including your calendar and emails. It can book a dinner for you and send invitations for that to your closest contacts, too. We’ve seen similar agentic capabilities with Google’s Gemini.
Refreshed Home Screen on Echo Show
Amazon also unveiled a series of new widgets alongside its refreshed Echo Show home screen, including ones that surface recipes, recent apps, weather, shopping lists, and connected smart home devices.
Conducting Music with Voice
For a music demo, Panay asked Alexa, "What’s the song Bradley Cooper sings… it’s like in a duet?" to which it answered, "Shallow with Lady Gaga from the movie A Star Is Born." More impressively, you can now dictate where music is playing from if you have multiple Alexa-enabled speakers in your house.
Improved Ring Integration
Alexa now supports AI-powered video search, allowing it to process recordings by Ring cameras to answer questions. In a live demo, Panay asked the assistant whether anyone had taken out the dog yesterday or the day before, to which it sifted through past video libraries to determine the answer.
Dense Document Processing
"You can now share just about anything with Alexa," said Mara Segal, Director of Alexa. That includes dense legal documents, handwritten notes, school schedules, PDFs, and more, from which the assistant can process the content and answer related questions.
Explore and Stories with Alexa
Amazon’s focus on kids-centric services extends to Alexa+, which now includes the Explore and Stories features. In a demo, the assistant was asked to create a story about funny animals. It followed up with a story about "Benny the Bearded Dragon," accompanied by a series of AI-generated artwork.
How Much Does Alexa+ Cost?
The upgraded Alexa service will cost $19.99 a month or be free if you’re an Amazon Prime member. It will officially roll out over the next few weeks and "subsequently in waves in the coming months," according to Amazon.
What Amazon Echo Devices Will Support Alexa+?
Amazon says that Alexa+ will be available on all Echo devices, including the Show 8, 10, 15, and 21, with the exception of certain older generation Echo devices like Echo Dot 1st Gen, Echo 1st Gen, Echo Plus 1st Gen, Echo Tap, Echo Show 1st Gen, Echo Show 2nd Gen, and Echo Spot 1st Gen, where you can continue to use the original Alexa.
Conclusion
Amazon’s Alexa+ event showcased the advanced capabilities of the virtual assistant, with a focus on multimodal, agentic interactions, conversational chain of commands, and more. The new features and services will be available on various devices, including Echo Show, Echo, and Ring, and will be free for Amazon Prime members.
FAQs
Q: What is Alexa+?
A: Alexa+ is the upgraded version of Amazon’s virtual assistant, which includes new features and services.
Q: What are the new features of Alexa+?
A: The new features of Alexa+ include multimodal, agentic interactions, conversational chain of commands, and more.
Q: How much does Alexa+ cost?
A: The upgraded Alexa service will cost $19.99 a month or be free for Amazon Prime members.
Q: Which Amazon Echo devices will support Alexa+?
A: Amazon Echo devices, including the Show 8, 10, 15, and 21, will support Alexa+.
