Amazon announced the launch of its new generative AI version of Alexa, Alexa Plus, which the company said will provide a more “frictionless” experience to its users and incorporate more personal memories to provide a more tailored service.
Described as a “model-agnostic system”, Amazon said it would use its own Amazon Nova model, as well as those from companies including Anthropic, to provide the best model for the task.
The company has also partnered with AI song generator Suno to enable Alexa to create songs on the fly from a prompt.
Amazon first announced its plans to upgrade Alexa to an AI-powered system in September 2023 but reports in June 2024 suggested that the company was struggling to realise its efforts.
The new system is set to begin rollout to Alexa devices from next month.