Technology reporter
AmazonAmazon has discovered Alexa+, a regulated version of his virtual assistant with which he hopes users will share “almost everything”.
Recent rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have caused a huge increase in software capable of chatting with natural sounds, with chatgt and deepseek among the most downloaded applications worldwide.
Amazon is trying to get into this, with Alexa+ showing a New York departure event that wished to be “your best friend in the digital world”.
It will be included for free in the main reconciliation when it starts from March – but for non -members will cost $ 19.99 (£ 16) a month, at the UK price that will not yet be announced.
However, experts have suggested that consumers can struggle to exceed their limited expectations of Amazon equipment.
“Smart speakers are found in one in four houses in the United Kingdom, however many users treat them as nothing more than expensive culinary timing,” said Ed Freed of the RAPP marketing agency.
“After all, the most logical place for a truly personal assistant to him is on your phone, not on your countertop.”
Amazon Panay’s equipment and services head said Alexa+ would remember the information, if you say you are an intolerant gluten vegan, for example, the future recipes that suggested they will remember this.
And he promised that there would be “no more Alexa” – it means that users will be able to talk to more conversations than before.
These are new features that Dr. Richard Whittle of Salford University Business School explained that they were “delayed”.
“Amazon is hoping her updated Alexa will challenge Copilot, Google Assistant and Syria, all of them use new LLM technology (big language model),” he said.
“When users can now talk naturally with their assistants in him, Alexa’s former main interaction looks narrow and rigid.”
His colleague Dr Gordon Fletcher, the associate dean of research and innovation, agreed.
“Technology changes faster now, competing models of he updated and everyone else clashes to answer, Grok last week, Claude this week,” he said.
“Alexa and Harduer Echo have always seemed more and more like a relic of aging, slow to move and always after the curve.”
A change of strategy
Amazon told the BBC Alexa+ would be available in all countries that currently have Alexa.
In the US, it will be available from Mars, with other countries receiving it later in 2025.
It will be available on the device since the second generation Echo Dot, which began in 2017.
For its equipment with screens, it will be available as much as the first generation Echo Show 8, which began in 2019.
It is clear that Amazon expects Alexa+ to do more than his predecessor – and to know much more about the lives of his users.
Mara Segal, director of Alexa, said people will now be able to share “almost everything” with virtual assistant – the idea is that by sharing email and photographs, it will be able to search through them for the things you are looking for .
Other demonstrations involved its use to reserve a taxi and a dinner reservation at a restaurant.
Thomas Husson, the main analyst in Forrester, said the rekindle was a silent acceptance by Amazon that his original vision for smart speakers had failed.
“By subsidizing hundreds of millions of speakers associated with ECHO, Alexa managed to enter the family in the hope of generating additional e -commerce sales,” he said.
“This strategy failed and the company invested $ 25 billion (£ 20 billion) in its division Alexa, without really revolutionizing smart homes.”
He said it was “about time” Amazon created a “really smart and useful assistant”.
But he warned to “really” distinguish, Alexa will have to distinguish between personal and household data, which “are equal to a major obstacle of intimacy and faith”.
And Dr. Stuart Millar, a leadership engineer in Rapid7, said the mass “makes sense” after Alexa has been left behind “competitors such as chatgt – but warned that the real test would be when regular people get hands on them on it.
“We have seen large technology companies start the ambitious features of him before, only to return when unexpected issues arise, or has not brought as expected,” he said.