A new generative AI-powered personal assistant, Alexa Plus, has been unveiled by Amazon. The business affirmed that Prime members will be able to use it for free.
Alexa Plus is the first step Amazon has taken into a deeper AI-verse. In terms of task performance, the new Alexa Plus, which is driven by generative AI, is an advancement. “Alexa+ is more conversational, smarter, personalized—and she helps you get things done,” claims Amazon. She simplifies difficult subjects, keeps you organised, keeps you entertained, and can talk about almost anything.
With its debut on Wednesday, Amazon made a significant advancement in improving the capabilities of its digital assistant. The business is releasing major upgrades to Alexa after years of building generative AI technologies.
Alexa Plus: New features
According to the business, Amazon has integrated LLMs into Alexa Plus, “creating a meaningfully smarter AI assistant that never stops learning.” Additionally, it has agentic capabilities, which will allow Alexa to perform activities on your behalf in the background by navigating the internet on her own.
The Alaxa Plus is now highly customised, improving on its core function, and Amazon affirms that this feature improves with time. “You can ask her to remember things that will make the experience more useful for you,” says Amazon. “She knows what you’ve bought, what you’ve listened to, what you’ve watched, the address you ship things to, and how you like to pay.”
She can utilise that information to take helpful action, it continues. “You can tell her things like family recipes, important dates, facts, dietary preferences, and more.” For instance, when you are organizing a family meal, Alexa+ can remember that you enjoy pizza but that your partner is gluten-free and your child is vegetarian in order to recommend a restaurant or dish.
According to Amazon, users can also expand Alexa’s knowledge by sending it documents, emails, pictures, and notes via email, a desktop browser, or even a mobile app. Alexa will then be able to remember, summarise, or act upon these items.
Amazon Plus: Privacy and Security
You could, for instance, send Alexa a picture of a live music schedule and ask her to add the information to your calendar; forward emails from the children’s school to Alexa and ask her to create a quiz out of them; or ask Alexa to “add all early dismissals to my calendar” or “remind me which days I’m volunteering in the classroom.”
However, the security and privacy issues are getting worse as AI and its subfields permeate our daily lives. “We built Alexa+ the same way we do any Amazon product—we set out to create something we think customers will love, while also designing it to protect their privacy and security, and providing them with the transparency and control they expect from Amazon,” the company says in reference to this subject.
For instance, we centralise crucial data, including your interactions with Alexa+ and different settings, under the Alexa Privacy dashboard, it goes on to explain. Alexa+, which is based on AWS’s secure infrastructure, offers top-notch privacy and security protection for your daily interactions.
Amazon Plus: Availability and price
Next month, Amazon plans to introduce Alexa+ in early access. It will first be made available in the US before gradually reaching a wider audience in the months that follow. It remains to be seen if India would experience the same thing.
Although Amazon Prime members will get free access, the subscription service will cost $19.99 (about Rs 1,743) per month.
The Echo Show, Amazon’s voice-activated touchscreen display, will be the main tool used for demos of Alexa+, which will work with practically all Alexa products the firm releases.