Amazon unveils Alexa+ voice Assistant

      For the first time in more than a decade, Amazon has carried out a large-scale upgrade of its Alexa voice assistant, adding generative artificial intelligence to it.

       This event is very important for the company, which has invested billions of dollars in the development of Alexa since the launch of the project in 2014. The company aims to integrate the assistant into various devices and eventually drive sales on its main shopping site.

       "Alexa knows almost everything about your life: your schedule, smart home management, preferences, devices used, contacts, favorite entertainment, and the many services you need," said Panos Panay, head of Amazon's devices and services division, at a presentation in New York.

       According to him, the new service was named Alexa+, which corresponds to the trend of naming premium technology and streaming services. Alexa+ will be free for Amazon Prime subscribers, while a subscription will cost $19.99 per month for other users. The launch of the service is scheduled for March, initially for a limited number of users, with subsequent expansion. Initially, Amazon considered a lower subscription price — $5 or $10 per month — for all users.

       Alexa+ will integrate with Amazon products such as Ring doorbells, allowing you to view camera recordings. Alexa division director Mara Segal said that the assistant will be able to check documents, such as homeowner association agreements, to inform users about permitted and prohibited changes to their property, such as the installation of solar panels.

      

       Against the background of this news, Amazon shares rose by 1.7%, reaching $216.45.

      

      The presentation also revealed Amazon's secret project, codenamed "Banyan," which aims to make Alexa more natural in communication. The generative AI underlying the new version is capable of learning from data and becoming smarter over time.

       After the announcement, Amazon executives demonstrated the capabilities of the updated Alexa, including food ordering, smart home control, and video streaming. However, the journalists were not allowed to test the service themselves.

       Although Amazon introduced Alexa three years after Apple's Siri, it was this assistant that popularized voice technology among a wide audience. However, the lack of significant updates in recent years has led to a decrease in user activity, especially against the background of the rapid development of AI.

       The updated Alexa AI service will be able to process multiple requests in a row and even perform actions on behalf of the user without the need for confirmation. This is fundamentally different from the current version, which executes commands one at a time.

       Amazon has confirmed that Alexa+ uses the best AI models for each specific task, relying on the Bedrock platform, Amazon's suite of AI services for experimentation. Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo, acknowledged that the AI startup Anthropic was involved in the development of Alexa+. He confirmed the information that the new service is based on the Claude model from Anthropic.

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