We were all for it when Amazon floated the idea of a smarter, AI-powered Alexa assistant. We were even willing to fork over the rumoured $5-10/m subscription fee to give it a go. But after Amazon’s Alexa-themed showcase last night, our excitement is sapped. Not because it can’t live up to Amazon’s bold claims, but because it’ll cost you $20/m (∼R370/m) for the privilege.
“Today, we’re excited to introduce Alexa+, our next-generation assistant powered by generative AI. Alexa+ is more conversational, smarter, personalized—and she helps you get things done,” Amazon’s Panos Panay wrote in a press release. “
Alexa+ knows, man
Vague assurances aside, Alexa+ is supposedly at its best when employed as a generic task rabbit (not to be confused with the ill-fated Rabbit R1). It’ll order your groceries, send out invites for upcoming events, “and help you track, discover, and enjoy new artists.” It’s also equipped with better memory, tracking your preferred dietary conditions and the sorts of movies you’re interested in – and can make suggestions accordingly.
Alexa+ is designed to speak more conversationally than we’re used to. It’ll understand whatever half-cooked thoughts your brain can muster, whether you’re using colloquial expressions, or simply want to show it your best 4chan-user impression and over-explain some complicated topics. It’s not like it can run away. Just don’t be surprised if the AI assistant responds in kind.
“At the foundation of Alexa’s state-of-the-art architecture are powerful large language models (LLMs) available on Amazon Bedrock, but that’s just the start. Alexa+ is designed to take action, and is able to orchestrate across tens of thousands of services and devices—which, to our knowledge, has never been done at this scale. To achieve this, we created a concept called “experts”—groups of systems, capabilities, APIs, and instructions that accomplish specific types of tasks for customers.”
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If Alexa+ is as robust as Amazon says, it can only manage the feat by tracking nearly every single thing you do. It knows the music you listen to, the movies you watch, your home address (you are shipping orders from the Amazon store), and the ways you like to pay. That’s a whole lot of information – even more than the ‘dumb’ Alexa.
Amazon has somewhat alleviated the pain of the absurd $20/m price point with the news that the subscription will be included as a ‘free’ add-on feature for all Amazon Prime subscribers. That’s not to be mistaken for the standalone Prime Video streaming service available in South Africa. That means – for countries without access to Prime like SA – they’ll first need to cough up the original subscription price.
For the time being, it doesn’t matter. Alexa+ will first roll out in the U.S. as part of an early access drop in the coming months, with no word on a wider global rollout. It’s not clear which devices will support the AI-powered service in the future, but it’s currently limited to Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 device owners during this period. In the wise words of our retail overlords:
“If you don’t have one of those devices, and want to be among the first to experience Alexa+, you can buy one now.”
