Previously there wasMany rumorsLater, Amazon finally officially unveiled its new Alexa+ digital assistant service that combines automatically generated artificial intelligence technology. It will be subscribed to at US$19.99 per month and is expected to be available in the United States in March this year. Users who pay a monthly subscription and use Prime membership can use this service for free.
Amazon has been investing in the development of artificial intelligence applications for many years
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated that the company has been investing in the application and development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the past 25 years. He emphasized that AI isn't adopted simply because it's cool or interesting, but primarily to solve user problems. With the advent of generative AI, Jassy anticipates that its application will become even more widespread and accelerate improvements in people's lives.
Panos Panay, Amazon's senior vice president of devices and services, emphasized the reliability and convenience of the Alexa digital assistant service, and its ability to simplify complex issues. He also stressed that since its launch in 2014, Alexa has continued to change the way people interact with technology through voice.
The Alexa+ digital assistant service announced this time introduces automatically generated artificial intelligence technology, making it easier for it to understand user interaction needs and further help solve user problems.
However, Amazon stated that the Alexa+ digital assistant service currently must be used with a display device, so it can only be used on smart displays such as Echo Show 8, Echo Show 10, Echo Show 15, and Echo Show 21. However, Amazon may still bring the Alexa+ digital assistant service to more devices in the future, such as accessing the Alexa+ digital assistant service through the web, and even revising the existing Alexa App.
Can interact through natural language conversation, without the need for a wake-up word to trigger activation
As for functional applications, the Alexa+ digital assistant service can communicate in natural language, and there is no need to trigger it through the "Alexa" wake-up word as in the past. You can interact with the Alexa+ digital assistant service directly through spoken conversation, and it can understand the user's spoken description more quickly.
In addition, the Alexa+ digital assistant service will continue to remember the user's habits as they interact, such as the user and their family's dietary preferences, food allergies, or weekly routines. It can also help plan tasks based on the user's habits and provide appropriate suggestions when the user needs them.
Users can also create routine to-do lists directly through the Alexa+ digital assistant service, find music content of personal interest through the Alexa+ digital assistant service, and even move the music currently playing in one room to another room with spoken commands. On the Prime Video streaming video service, users can also use spoken descriptions to let the Alexa+ digital assistant service quickly find corresponding clips such as plot turning points and specific character appearances and play them.
At the same time, if users use various smart appliances and IoT devices that support Alexa services at home, they can use the Alexa+ digital assistant service to summarize recent home conditions, such as whether someone stayed at the door while they were away, or how long the lights at home had been on.
Alexa+ will help you remember more content and add more interactive modes
Mara Segal, director of Alexa, said that the Alexa+ digital assistant service will be able to help remember various things at home. For example, users can share various documents, manuals, recipes and other information with the Alexa+ digital assistant service. The Alexa+ digital assistant service can then help summarize the key points of the document content or answer the handling methods mentioned in the relevant manuals. Users can even bind their personal calendars and email inboxes to allow the Alexa+ digital assistant service to help remember upcoming itineraries, to-do items, and the key points of email content.
Elsewhere, the Alexa+ digital assistant service has added two new features for children: "Stories with Alexa" and "Explore with Alexa." The former allows the Alexa+ digital assistant service to tell stories to children and answer questions about the story, while the latter allows continuous interaction with children, thereby inspiring them to think more creatively.
Alexa+ is powered by Amazon's own natural language models, including Nova and Anthropic.
Daniel Rausch, Amazon vice president in charge of Alexa and Echo products, explained the architecture behind the Alexa+ digital assistant service, including access to the Amazon Bedrock platform.Amazon's own Nova, Anthropic, and other large-scale natural language models hosted by the industry, allowing the Alexa+ digital assistant service to operate in a more "intelligent" manner. It also connects with cooperative content from many major news organizations including the Associated Press, Reuters News, Time Magazine, USA TODAY, Politico, etc., to provide newer and more factual inferences and answers, and even answer more complex questions corresponding to different topics.
Amazon also plans to use APIs and other methods to connect the Alexa+ digital assistant service with more third-party services, enabling it to handle more complex interactive needs and support more application functions. It also plans to release the Alexa AI Multi-Agent SDK to allow more brands and developers to create more agent services that can be connected with Alexa.
For example, in Amazon's demonstration, users can create and edit shopping lists in real time through dialogue, and add planned ingredients to Amazon Fresh orders based on their dietary preferences, and even add products from platforms such as Whole Foods and Grubhub.
