Introduction of Amazon’s Next-Generation Digital Assistant

After years of development, Amazon’s latest digital assistant, Alexa+, is now available for public use. At the company’s 2025 devices event, Panos Panay, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, showcased the capabilities of Alexa+.

Key Features of Alexa+

The technology behind Alexa+ enables it to detect tone and mood, responding accordingly with a more natural-sounding voice. Additionally, users only need to say “Alexa” once to initiate a conversation, and the assistant will continue to follow the conversation. Panay highlighted that Alexa+ possesses contextual awareness, allowing it to “remember” earlier parts of a conversation. As Panay noted, “There’s no more Alexa speak” with Alexa+, making it possible to have almost any conversation without the intimidation factor of AI.

Impressive Demos of Alexa+

In one notable demonstration, Panay asked Alexa+ to play a song without providing its full name. When asked, “What’s the song Bradley Cooper sings.. it’s like a duet?” Alexa+ correctly identified the song as “Shallow” and stated that it was sung with Lady Gaga in A Star is Born. Panay then instructed Alexa to “move” the music to the “right side of the room,” and the assistant correctly identified the speaker and played the music there. According to Panay, Alexa+ can even understand requests like “play the music everywhere but don’t wake the baby,” and it will reason that it shouldn’t play music in the nursery.

Deeper Integration with Amazon Services

At first glance, Alexa+ offers more extensive and intelligent integration with Amazon’s various services. For example, while watching Prime Video, users can jump to a specific scene by providing details like the name of an actor or character, eliminating the need to manually fast-forward or rewind. Similarly, it’s possible to search through Ring footage using this method. During the demo, Panay asked Alexa+ to help him recall if someone had walked the family dog recently, and the assistant correctly jumped to the relevant clip.

Availability and Pricing

Alexa+ will be included with Amazon Prime, and the company will also offer the enhanced digital assistant separately for $20 per month. For context, Prime currently costs $15 per month in the US. Amazon will begin rolling out early access to Alexa+ starting next month, with availability expanding over the coming months in phases.

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