An AI-powered update to Amazon's digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming online. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of its new Alexa.com website, which is now available to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow customers to use Alexa+ online, much like they can do today with other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini.
While Alexa-powered devices, including Amazon Echo smart speakers and displays, are well established, with more than 600 million devices sold worldwide, Amazon believes that for its AI assistant to be competitive, it will need to be everywhere – not just in the home, but also on your phone and on the Internet.
What's more, the extension can then enable anyone to interact with Alexa+, even if they don't have such a device at home.
In conjunction with this expansion, Amazon is updating its Alexa mobile app, which will now offer more “agent handovers.” In other words, it puts a chatbot-style interface on the app's home page, making it look more like a typical AI chatbot. (While previously you could talk to Alexa in the app, now we focus on chat while other features take a backseat.)
On Alexa.com, customers can use Alexa+ for common tasks – such as exploring complex topics, creating content, and creating travel plans. However, Amazon is trying to set its assistant apart from the rest by focusing on families and their needs at home. This includes controlling smart devices, as was already possible with the original Alexa, and doing things like updating the family calendar or to-do list, making dinner reservations, adding needed groceries to your Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods cart, finding recipes and saving them to the library, and even planning a family movie night with personalized recommendations.
Recently, Amazon is integrating more services with Alexa+, including Angi, Expedia, Square, and Yelp, which will join existing apps such as Fodor's, OpenTable, Suno, Ticketmaster, Thumbtack, and Uber.
Alexa.com includes a side navigation bar for faster access to the Alexa features you use most, so you can pick up where you left off, such as adjusting the thermostat, checking calendar appointments, viewing shopping lists, and more.
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Additionally, Amazon is trying to convince customers to share their personal documents, emails and calendar access with Alexa+ so that its artificial intelligence can become a kind of hub for managing events in the home, from school holidays and football schedules to doctor's appointments and other things a family needs to remember – like when the dog got its last rabies vaccine or what day the neighbor's barbecue is taking place.
This is an area where Amazon will need to expand, as it doesn't have its own productivity suite or the wealth of personal data that competitors like Google already have for their customers. Instead, Amazon relied on tools to upload and upload files to Alexa+ so the AI could track them. This will also now be a feature available on Alexa.com, and shared information will be able to be displayed on the Echo Show screen, where it can also be managed.
The ability to manage your family's personal information could be Alexa's biggest advantage if used properly.
“Seventy-six percent of what customers use Alexa+ can't be done by any other AI,” says Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo at Amazon, in an interview with TechCrunch. “I think this is a really interesting statistic about Alexa+ for two reasons.
He continues: “First, because customers count on Alexa to do unique things. You know, you can send Alexa a photo of an old family recipe, then discuss the recipe while cooking in the kitchen, replace the ingredients with what you have at home, and finish the task.”
However, he notes that another 24% use Alexa to do things that other AI can do – this could mean they are shifting more of their AI use to Alexa+.
Alexa.com will initially only be available to Early Access customers who log in to their Amazon account. Since Alexa+ debuted early last year, Amazon has been steadily rolling out early access.
Rausch tells us that tens of millions of consumers now have access to Alexa+ and have two to three times more conversations with Alexa+ than with the original Alexa assistant. In particular, they make three times more purchases using Alexa+ and use recipes five times more often than before, he says. Heavy smart home customers also use Alexa+ 50% more often to control their smart home compared to the original Alexa.
However, there are complaints about Alexa+ outages and errors on social media and online forums. Rausch, however, believes complaints are overrepresented online. He says the number of people quitting Alexa+ after trying it is in the mid-single digits or “actually…almost none.”
“Ninety-seven percent of Alexa devices support Alexa+, and we're seeing customers continue to use it over the years and across multiple generations of devices,” adds Rausch. “We support all of the original Alexa capabilities, with tens of thousands of services and devices that Alexa was already integrated with migrated to Alexa+.”
