Amazon debuts new Alexa voice assistant with AI overhaul

Amazon unveiled on Wednesday the first major overhaul of its Alexa voice assistant since it was introduced more than a decade ago, embedding it with generative artificial intelligence.

The effort carries significant weight at Amazon, which has plowed billions of dollars into Alexa since its launch in 2014 in the hope of putting the service into a range of devices and ultimately driving sales on its main e-commerce website.

"Alexa knows almost every instrument in your life, your schedule, your smart home, your preferences, the devices you're using, the people you're connected to, the entertainment you love and uses many of the apps you use, a lot of the services you need," said Panos Panay, Amazon's head of devices and services, at a launch event in New York.

The new service is called Alexa+, Panay said, echoing the nomenclature of the higher tier of many tech and streaming service offerings.

Alexa+ is free for Amazon Prime members and is priced at $19.99 a month for non-Prime users. The service, which was live as of Wednesday, will be available in March to some users, with the rollout expanding to more people over time.

Panay demonstrated how Alexa can store, through prompts, customer preferences - for example, that a household member is vegetarian and prefers Greek and Italian food but eschews peanut butter. It can be used to make dinner reservations and send timed texts or reminders.

The service can connect to Amazon products such as Ring doorbells to show recordings from its cameras.

Alexa director Mara Segal said Alexa can review documents such as a homeowners association contract so that a resident knows what is allowed, like installing solar panels.

Amazon shares rose about 2% to $217.02.

Competition from Apple, Google

The event marked the unveiling of a secret project known internally as "Banyan" aimed at making Alexa more conversational. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can learn from data and improve over time.

While Amazon's Alexa was launched three years after Apple's Siri hit the iPhone maker's devices, Alexa helped make the use of voice assistants more mainstream. Still, the lack of solid improvements and overhauls to Alexa over the years meant an erosion in consumer usage of the service, especially in the age of AI.

Apple has already incorporated its suite of AI features, dubbed Apple Intelligence, into its Siri voice assistant, while Google has revamped its voice assistant using its AI chatbot Gemini.

Alexa is voice-controlled software installed in products such as smart speakers that can provide answers to user questions, play music, set timers and serve as a hub for home automation, by linking internet-connected devices so that, for instance, a light can be turned on with just voice prompts.

The new Alexa AI service will be able to respond to multiple prompts in sequence and even act as an "agent" by taking actions for users without their direct involvement. That contrasts with the current iteration which generally handles only a single request at a time.

Executives have debated charging as much as $10 per month for the new service, people have told Reuters, to recoup some of the investment sunk into the money-losing business. Amazon did not immediately address pricing details.

Amazon has said there are some 500 million Alexa-capable devices in consumer hands already, meaning the revamp is at once a huge money-making opportunity for the Seattle retailer - and a big financial risk if it does not live up to expectations.

Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo, acknowledged AI startup Anthropic's contribution to building Alexa+, confirming a Reuters story that Anthropic's Claude was a major underpinning of the service.