Amazon has announced the roll-out of Alexa+ - the next-generation virtual assistant that comes as an upgrade to the popular Alexa. According to Amazon's SVP of devices and services Panos Panay, Alexa+ is more conversational, smarter, and more personalised for users, thanks to a new system that sees the virtual assistant work closely with generative AI. Alexa+ is to be priced at $19.99 (approximately Rs. 1750) per month, but will be available for free to Amazon Prime subscribers and users. For reference, a Prime account in India costs Rs. 299 a month or Rs. 1499 per year.
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The new virtual assistant Alexa+ is meant to be more covnersational, and will likely understand requests a bit better thanks to a focus on conversational language. This will likely make using Alexa a bit easier; right now, your requests need to be very specific, and even then there are a lot of mis-steps in getting things done for more complex requests.
Core functionality of Alexa+ will remain the same as classic Alexa, including being able to control IoT products in your home, letting you play music with voice commands, access information and on-device games on Echo devices, and even helping out with things like reminders, timers, and alarms, among other things. Alexa+ promises to do all of it a bit better, thanks to better processing, the ability to use Internet-based services a bit more contextually, and generally using AI a bit better.
Alexa+ is expected to roll out to users in the US in the next few weeks during the early access period, and will eventually reach users the world over in the coming months. Echo Show device owners will receive priority access, but it will eventually be available on all Echo devices, as well as through a dedicated smartphone app.