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Amazon unveiled Alexa+, a new service that integrates generative AI natively into the company’s longtime voice assistant — promising free-flowing conversations, plus the ability to learn user preferences over time to personalize the experience, and autonomously handle tasks such as travel arrangements and activity planning.
Alexa+ will be free to Amazon Prime members, and $19.99/month on its own. The company announced the news Wednesday morning in New York City.
“You can also use Alexa+ anywhere you want, from your favorite Echo devices and the Alexa mobile app to an all-new web browser experience,” Amazon says in a live blog from the launch. “Alexa+ will remember the context of your conversations so that you can seamlessly pick up where you left off as you go about your day.”
Alexa+ uses AI models from Amazon and its key AI partner, Anthropic.
The updates include a new user interface for Amazon’s Echo Show, with a screen that adapts based on the proximity of a user to the device, with a customized home screen that includes a “For You” pane and smart home controls.
Alexa+ features also include natural language controls, such as the ability to move music to different Alexa devices in the house. Amazon gave the example of saying, “play the music everywhere, but don’t wake the baby,” where Alexa+ would know not to play music on the device in the baby’s room.
Amazon says the new service “will start rolling out in the U.S. in the next few weeks, and subsequently in waves in the coming months starting with households with Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21.”
Alexa faces strong competition from Google Assistant, which is deeply integrated across the Android ecosystem and continues to refine its conversational AI capabilities. Apple’s Siri, though sometimes criticized for lagging behind, benefits from the massive iPhone user base and ongoing improvements in iOS.
Say hello to Alexa+. Need dinner plans? She’ll book your favorite restaurant, grab an Uber, and text your sitter — all in one conversation. Want concert tickets? She’ll scout for the best prices. Need to check if the garbage went out? She’ll find that exact Ring clip in seconds.… pic.twitter.com/gtwi9OajvD— Panos Panay (@panos_panay) February 26, 2025
Meanwhile, the company has been under pressure to make using Alexa more like interacting with OpenAI’s ChatGPT voice mode and other AI chatbots.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy opened the event with an overview of the company’s AI strategy, including its own Nova artificial intelligence models.
For more than a year, Jassy has been saying that Amazon’s vision is to build “the world’s best personal assistant,” noting in the past that the advent of large language models would make that more feasible.
One challenge has been Alexa’s underlying infrastructure, relying on different services and apps depending on the nature of the user’s request, leading to a more disjointed experience. This has now changed, according to the company.
“The rearchitecture of all of Alexa has happened. We’re pumped about it,” said Panos Panay, Amazon’s senior vice president of Devices and Services, using his trademark term from his days leading the Microsoft Surface business, according to a live blog by The Verge from the New York City launch event.
Amazon describes the technical revamp in this post.
A prior generative AI capability for Alexa, previewed in September 2023, was called “Let’s Chat.” This was a special mode for open-ended conversations with Alexa, whereas the new capability is built into the broader experience. It was never released publicly, and the Alexa team has been taking a different approach since Panay took over.
