Amazon just revealed Alexa+, the new and premium version of its virtual assistant that features an infusion of generative AI that’s designed to do even more things for you. There’s just one catch: At the company’s ’s big unveiling event in New York City, Amazon representatives noted that this service will work best on Amazon’s touchscreen smart displays — which you might not already have.
These new features range from stuff that might sound familiar — conversational back and forths in which Alexa understands complicated questions — to other tricks you may not have seen before. Amazon’s demonstrations showed how this new Alexa can make restaurant reservations for you, help you order groceries and find event tickets for you, just to name a few examples.
Let’s get the “how?” and “how much?” out of the way up front. While owning one of Amazon’s Echo Show 8, 10, 15 and 21 devices will get you early access to Alexa+, the service will cost $20 per month normally. Amazon Prime subscribers, though, will get Alexa+ automatically. If that sounds cool to you, keep reading to dive right in.
If you want to use all of the new Alexa+ features, including those for connected Ring cameras, you’ll want one of the larger Echo Shows. Amazon updated this model last year for improved audio and camera quality.
Amazon’s largest Echo Show will also be great for Alexa+, and that screen space will make it easier to add more widgets to your home screen.
The Alexa+ features I’m most excited for
As a generative AI skeptic, the best thing I can say about Alexa+ is that it doesn’t smell like all the rest of the stuff I’ve seen and tested. And as much as the new Alexa seems a bit too cheery, some of these things make me forget the whole debate about artificial intelligence. And not once did anyone say “ChatGPT” aloud, so that was a win in my book. Amazon’s clearly pivoting away from the previous uses for large language models to stuff that is potentially more useful to the everyday person, even if it’s all still a chatbot-like experience.
One of the demos saw Alexa+ make a restaurant reservation after all the user provided was the name of the restaurant, number of guests and a time. The assistant figured out that the restaurant was on OpenTable, confirmed the availability and put the reservation in the user’s calendar. As someone who always tries to make a reservation — show the people in your life that their time matters to you — this is clutch. Apple’s Visual Intelligence can do this for select businesses, but it requires you to be in front of those shops.
Additionally, Alexa+ seems to work a lot more naturally than the Alexa you might be used to. Amazon product chief Panos Panay told the assembled press at the reveal event that this assistant means you can stop issuing voice commands in “Alexa-speak” and start speaking more naturally. Further, Amazon’s got a bunch of integrations planned with popular services such as Ticketmaster for finding seats and OpenTable for reservations — though I’m wondering about the alternatives you can’t avoid, such as AXS and Resy.
If this has you excited to use Alexa+, know that it’s basically getting a staggered release when it arrives this March. Amazon’s press release says it will “prioritize” Echo 8, Echo Show 10, Echo Show 15 and Echo Show 21 device owners in the first days of this service, and I’ve learned that some features will only be available on those screens. The first that I want to call out is the grocery ordering feature, which will work with Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market.
In a fairly impressive demonstration, a rep added a conversationally dictated list of food items, including directions such as “change that orange juice to organic” and to remove items. It even helped him hunt for vegetables his young kid “would likely want to eat,” and knew what to add when he asked for “all of the ingredients to make waffles from scratch.” It also found the right Sunkist raisins when he asked for “those mini boxes of Raisins you put in kids’ lunch boxes.”
Putting all of this in an interface where you can tap to edit what you’ve selected makes sense, which is why I’m not shocked your average Echo speaker or the smaller Echo Dot won’t get this. At the same time, I don’t understand why you won’t be able to do this on the new Alexa phone apps.
Similarly, Amazon showed off a trick that’s exclusive to Ring cameras, where you ask Alexa+ about what happened during the day at home, and it shows you a series of highlights from what’s gone on in front of your connected cameras. One demonstrator asked for it to show him if anyone walked the family dog, and it presented clips of every time that had happened, with timestamps, in a carousel. Just like with the tappable grocery list, this makes the most sense for screens, but I was still surprised to learn this won’t be on the phone apps or website versions of Alexa+. Oh, and this feature will only be on the Echo Show 15 and 21 at launch, according to the presenter I talked to — which makes some sense, because the very button-heavy interface might not look great on a smaller monitor.
Of course, the lifeless generative AI images we’ve seen everywhere noodled their way into Amazon’s presentation, in a section about using Alexa+ to create stories with children that left me feeling a little more hollow than when it began. I really hope parents don’t outsource this kind of thing to the computers these days.
What you need to know about the Echo Show 15 and 21
While owning or buying an Echo Show 8, 10, 15 or 21 will help you get Alexa+ earliest, those larger screens will also likely be the best way to use the service — not least because you’ll want as much space to tap and swipe as you can. The Echo Show 21 and Echo Show 15 are Amazon’s latest smart displays, and seek to be super-screens with their use of widgets for weather, smart home, calendar and to-do list functions, as well as the Fire TV experience.
The current Echo Show 15 is Amazon’s second swing at the framed smart display, and features a 13-megapixel webcam for video calls. The Echo Show 21 features that same camera, which comes with auto-framing to keep everyone centered in the call. You may need that framing because these screens are meant to be wall-mounted, though Amazon does sell them with adjustable stands for using them like a larger Echo Show 8 or 10.
The takeaway
Of all of the generative AI stuff I’ve seen so far, Alexa+ looks like the most likely to succeed — at least if I have to apply a yearbook-style superlative. There aren’t a lot of the superfluous features we’ve seen on other devices (like rewriting paragraphs of text), and other Alexa+ features I didn’t get a chance to mention above — recipe hunting and looking up songs without even singing them — all could be useful to folks as well.
That said, we need to see how all of this actually works in reality and what features come when, and to whom. Stay tuned, readers, because we can’t look away from all of these generative AI gadgets — even if we wanted to.
FAQs
Nope! But if you already have Amazon Prime, you will be able to use Alexa+ without spending the $20 monthly fee for the membership.
The traditional Alexa assistant is still sticking around, so don’t worry about being forced to use this generative-AI-enhanced version.
Amazon will make Alexa+ available beginning in March 2025, but not to all users and devices at once. Those who own an Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 will likely get access ahead of those who do not.
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Electronics writer Henry T. Casey has been reviewing Amazon devices, including Kindles and Fire tablets, for the better part of his nearly 10-year career as a tech journalist. He’s also been reviewing all of the latest Apple and Samsung phones packed with generative AI — and he’s still trying to figure out if this new wave of features is actually worth understanding.
