This is Alexa Plus, the evolution with the generative Amazon assistant

Amazon has presented Alexa Plus, A new version of its most conversational, intelligent and useful assistant, driven by generative artificial intelligence, which acquires multimodal capacities to complete the user’s needs in their day to day.

In an event held on Wednesday in New York (United States), Amazon has shared the advances that will boost its digital assistant Alexa to introduce it in the era of the generative AI.

The use of Alexa has increased by 20 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year and has millions of new users every day, according to the senior vice president of devices and services, Panay Panos.

Panay acknowledges that Talking with Alexa is sometimes frustrating And it does not help users as it should. But this changes with the generative AI, which makes Alexa a kind of orchestra director who knows all the elements involved in people’s daily lives (calendar, smart home, devices, entertainment).

The manager has given way the new Alexa, with a new architecture based on generative, what Improve natural conversation With the user and acquires the ability to make reservations, make purchases, offer ideas for dinner as part of the same planning.

All this meets under the name of Alexa Plus, a new more intelligent and useful experience, and with Capacity for COmar the user environment and the tone and mood of the conversation. In addition, it no longer requires the complete activation command (‘Hey, Alexa), but just mentioning’ Alexa ‘once to activate it and initiate a natural conversation.

ALEXA MULTIMODAL

It also has multimodal capacitiessince you can interpret the content of an image, and remember the content of the conversation. Alexa is accompanied by new animations, called Alexacons, which are shown at the bottom of the screen of an echo show, and with them shows the personality.

Offers one greater integration between connected devices -For example Fire TV or Ring cameras- and services -As Amazon Music- in the Amazon ecosystem that are controlled during the conversation with natural language.

Alexa’s director, Mara Segal, has deepened the capacities that the generative AI incorporates in Alexa, similar to those already seen in other attendees: ANIALISSIS AND SUMMARY OF DOCUMENTS complexes -from PDF and emails to handwritten notes and photographs. It also answers questions about the content and perform actions such as introducing data into a calendar.

There are also two characteristics designed for children: Explore and stories with Alexa, which display multimodal capacities to inspire and entertain the little ones, for example, generating a story and the images that illustrate it.

Alexa Plus has USA Amazon Bedrock to access large -sized language models that enable their functions, including those of Antopic, a key partner for the company, and Amazon Nova, a new foundational model that seeks to improve the supply of performance and price.

As explained by the vice president of Alexa and Echo, Daniel Rausch, Alexa Plus will always use the best model for the task that is requested, Without having a preferably. It also has access to hundreds of experts and works with tens of thousands of members.

Alexa Plus will begin to be available with early access next month in English, in the United States. It will be included in the Prime subscription, but for the rest of the users you will have a cost of $ 19.99.