Tom Gerken
Technological journalist
Amazon
Amazon said that the BBC Alexa + would be available on the “overwhelming majority” of its echo devices
Amazon unveiled Alexa +, a revised version of his virtual assistant with whom he hopes that users will share “almost anything”.
Rapid recent progress of artificial intelligence (AI) have caused enormous growth in software capable of natural consonance conversations, with Chatgpt and Deepseek among the most downloaded applications in the world.
Amazon tries to draw, with Alexa + saying to a launch event in New York, he wanted to be “your new best friend in the digital world”.
It will be included free of charge in the subscriptions prevails when launched from March-but in non-members, it will cost $ 19.99 (£ 16) per month, with the price of the United Kingdom to announce.
However, experts suggested that consumers may find it difficult to overcome their limited expectations towards Amazon devices.
“Intelligent speakers are in one in four British house, but many users treat them as nothing more than expensive kitchen timers,” said Ed Libéré from the Rapp UK marketing agency.
“In the end, the most logical place for a really personal AI assistant is on your phone, not on your counter.”
Amazon’s head and services manager Panos Panay said that Alexa + would remember information, which means that if you say that you are a gluten -intolerant vegan, for example, the future recipes she suggested would cause you.
And he promised that there would no longer be Alexa Speak ” – which means that users can speak to him more conversation than possible.
These are new features that Dr. Richard Whittle of the Business School of the University of Salford explained “long awaited”.
“Amazon hopes that his Alexa has upgraded will challenge Copilot, Google Assistant and Siri, who all use a new LLM technology (large-language model),” he said.
“When users can now discuss their AI assistants naturally, Alexa’s main former vocal interaction seems narrow and rigid.”
His colleague Dr Gordon Fletcher, dean associate of research and innovation, accepted.
“Technology is changing faster now, competitors’ models are updated and everyone rushes to answer, Grok last week, Claude this week,” he said.
“Alexa and Echo material has more and more seemed an aging, slow relic to move and always behind the curve.”
A change of strategy
Amazon said the BBC Alexa + would be available in all countries that currently have Alexa.
In the United States, it will be available from March, other countries later obtaining it in 2025.
It will be available on devices from the start of the second generation, which was launched in 2017.
For its devices with screens, it will be available until the first generation Echo Show 8, which was launched in 2019.
It is clear that Amazon expects that Alexa + does more than its predecessor – and knows much more about the life of its users.
Mara Segal, director of Alexa, said that people will now be able to share “about anything” with the virtual assistant – the idea being that sharing emails and photographs, he can look for things you ask.
Other demonstrations included using it to reserve a taxi and a dinner reservation in a restaurant.
Thomas Husson, Forrester’s principal analyst, said that the recovery was a tacit admission of Amazon that his original vision of intelligent speakers had failed.
“By subsidizing hundreds of millions of speakers linked to the echo, Alexa managed to enter households in the hope of generating additional electronic commerce sales,” he said.
“This strategy has failed and the company has invested $ 25 billion (20 billion pounds sterling) in its Alexa division, without really revolutionizing smart houses.”
He said it was “time” that Amazon created a “really intelligent and useful assistant”.
But he warned that “really differentiated himself”, Alexa should distinguish between personal data and households, which “is equivalent to a great obstacle to privacy and confidence”.
And Dr. Stuart Millar, the main AI engineer at Rapid7, said that the move “was logical” because Alexa “delayed” competitors such as Chatgpt – but warned that the real test would be when ordinary people were getting their hands on it.
“We have already seen large technological companies launching ambitious AI features, only to go back when unexpected problems arise, or he did not behave as expected,” he said.
