The beginning of the beginning of the start of the start of the start of the start of the start of the year took place a few days ago and the company made it clear that AI will remain in the center of his hardware universe. The fashion word of the century is Alexa, perhaps the most popular virtual assistant in the world. SVP from devices and services Panos Panay suggested that millions of new customers use it every day during the event.
Also: everything you need to know about Alexa+, Amazon’s new generative AI assistant
And that is probably true: Alexa is the core of Amazon’s most prominent hardware products, including Echo speakers and fire TVs. Today the company showed what the next step has for his virtual assistant, now called Alexa+, because it seems to compete with Google, OpenAi and others. The new Alexa will be “something that you understand, that can actually take action”, Panay teased, and it will work with tens of thousands of Amazon Partners.
Here is an overview of the best new functions with Alexa+ and how much it will cost.
1. Multimodal, agent interactions
Alexa+ can now process visual information via the cameras of your device to understand and answer questions, powered by LLMS and can now process visual information. In one case, Alexa was asked to describe the excitement and enthusiasm of the crowd during the event by using the camera of the Echo Show 15. Although the answers were two to three sentences, they were descriptive and dictated in a fairly approachable tone.
The Agentic options of Alexa+ extend to browsing, with the possibility to navigate internet via Alexa.com and to complete tasks for you on websites with Amazon-partner. Alexa, for example, was asked to book a professional repairer for a damaged device. Then it searched for a nearby repair service and booked an appointment via Thumbtack.
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In another demo, a presenter collaborated with Alexa to develop a shopping list, in which items are presented to add or remove during the conversation. Surprisingly, the function of shopping partners outside Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh supported.
As Alexa responds, a smooth blue animation appears at the bottom of the device screen. This new change reflects Amazon’s more expressive user interface.
2. Conversational chain of commands
In addition to responding more naturally, with Humor’s sprinkles, another big unveiling showed how Alexa can now fulfill tasks in your daily apps and services, including your agenda and e -mails. It can book a dinner for you and also send invitations to your close contacts. We have seen similar agent possibilities with Google’s Gemini.
In a demo, the virtual assistant was asked to recommend local pizzerias, to which he pulled the best -rated shop fronts via Yelp. Another example was asking Alexa to remember things, such as “Mary loves Greek and Indian eating and is vegetarian, but doesn’t like peanut butter.” It did exactly without question.
3. Renewed home screen on Echo Show
Amazon also unveiled a series of new widgets in addition to the renewed Echo show start screen, including those recipes, recent apps, weather, shopping lists and connected Smart Home devices come to the surface.
Also: 5 Amazon Alexa Privacy settings that you must change immediately
The adaptive display uses the property with a larger screen to display relevant information, depending on whether you are far away from the device or poet. For example, the Echo show shows photos and personalized content from far away and switches to a more detailed layout when you approach it.
4. Perform music with voice
For a music demo early Panay Alexa: “What is the song that Bradley Cooper sings … it’s in a duet?” To which it answered, “superficially with Lady Gaga from the film *a star was born *.” More impressive, you can now dictate where music plays if you have several speakers with Alexa in your house.
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For example, you can ask Alexa to play music left or right, with the assumption that speakers are mounted in designated areas. We must see exactly how reliable this is in real-world tests. And for the last trick from Amazon asked Panay Alexa to go to the scene in the film when “Sallow” is sung, and it did – with the second attempt.
5. Improved ring integration
Alexa now supports AI-driven video search, so that the recordings of ring cameras can process to answer questions. In a live -demo, Panay asked the assistant whether someone had taken the dog yesterday or the day before, which he adorned by previous video bibliotheken to determine the answer.
6. Dense document processing
“You can now share just about everything with Alexa,” said Mara Segal, director of Alexa. This includes dense legal documents, handwritten notes, school schedules, PDFs and more, from which the assistant can process the content and answer related questions.
Also: how I feed my files to a local AI for better, more relevant answers
In another example, a school schedule was uploaded and Alexa was asked to add data for football practices to the calendar and propose snacks that could be brought to them.
7. Explore and stories with Alexa
The focus of Amazon on children -oriented services extends to Alexa+, which now contains the functions Explore and Stories. In a demo, the assistant was asked to make a story about funny animals. It followed with a story about “Benny the Bearded Dragon”, accompanied by a series of AI-generated artworks.
How much does Alexa+cost?
The improved Alexa service costs $ 19.99 per month or are free if you are one Amazon Prime -member. It will officially roll out in the coming weeks and “then in waves in the coming months,” said Amazon.
Which Amazon Echo devices do Alexa+support?
Amazon zegt dat Alexa+ beschikbaar zal zijn op alle Echo -apparaten, inclusief de show 8, 10, 15 en 21, met uitzondering van bepaalde oudere generatie Echo -apparaten zoals Echo Dot 1st Gen, Echo 1st Gen, Echo Plus 1st Gen, Echo Tap, Echo Show 1e Gen, Echo Show 2nd Gen, en Echo Spot 1st Gen, waar je kunt blijven gebruiken de oorspronkelijke Alexa.
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According to the press release: “You can also try Alexa+ in your web browser, the Alexa app, compatible fire TVs and brand tablets. This experience is currently not supported on Alexa built-in devices and Amazon Astro, but we look forward to expanding Alexa+ to extra devices in the future.”
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