Amazon's Alexa+ is looking really compelling

Finally.

It's taken them a bit of a time, hasn't it?

Are we there yet? Have we got an 'Alexa' that's bang-up-to-date and ready to compete with the latest and greatest?

Quite possibly, yes.

It's been rather painful watching how my children interact effortlessly with ChatGPT, Pi and any number of other AI systems ... but when it comes to the Google Home and Alexa devices we have, they are brutally blunt.

Google Home and Alexa, in our house, are dumb terminals as far as the children are concerned. They are good only for setting timers.

Just let that one sink in for a moment.

I have 3 children: Two teen boys and a single-figures girl. Despite the literal billions of dollars spent on Google Home and Alexa, they have zero time for either platform.

Bixby, from Samsung? Useless.

Siri? They just don't. They haven't got the patience.

They tried it once or twice and that's it. With this generation, that's all you get. One or two shots to deliver. Fail and it's total failure. They are simply intolerant of anything that doesn't deliver.

ChatGPT (et al) deliver. They at least understand and don't give stupid, lame responses.

So it is with some interest that I've been following Amazon's horrifying realisation of just how far behind they were back in November 2022 when ChatGPT 3.5 hit the internet.

Up until around then, they were pretty good with all this stuff. Alexa was at least reliable enough to be able to understand hundreds of generic prompts. It was simply amazing (to my eyes, anyway). I remember how bad all of this stuff used to be. I remember sweating profusely trying to get Dragon Dictate to work for dozens of hours back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

With an installed base of 600 million devices, I haven't lost hope for the company. If they could just get it right... the potential! And the best bit... it's all cloud driven, so you really can simply upgrade.

As Panos Panay, SVP of Devices & Services at Amazon writes in his introductory blog post today:

Alexa+ has deep knowledge: We've infused cutting-edge LLMs with Alexa's vast knowledge base, creating a meaningfully smarter AI assistant that never stops learning. But it’s not just about knowing a lot of things, it’s about deeply understanding and bringing it all together into an accurate and real-time response—and Alexa+ does that, whether you know what you’re looking for (“What is the lowest point in any ocean on earth?”) or just have a half-formed question or idea (“What’s the song that Bradley Cooper sings at the start of that country music movie?”).

Now you're talking. He continues:

You can also add to her knowledge by sharing documents, emails, photos, and messages—via a desktop browser, the mobile app, or even via email—for Alexa to remember, summarize, or take action on. For example, you could send a picture of a live music schedule, and have Alexa add the details to your calendar; upload study materials and ask Alexa to turn them into a quiz; or forward emails from the kids’ school to Alexa, then say, “Add all early dismissals to my calendar,” or, “Remind me what days I’m volunteering in the classroom.”

This could be enormously compelling for standard users – of which there are a metric ton already messing about with ChatGPT. For instance, ZDnet reported this week that there are now 400 million weekly ChatGPT users.

How many of them have an Alexa device at home?

How many of them are Amazon Prime customers?

Interesting. Alexa+ is $19.99 a month... but – and this is yet another compelling but – it's included for all Prime customers.

Got Prime? You have (or will soon have) Alexa+ already.

If it's good enough – and if given it's built on top of AWS Bedrock (did anyone say Anthropic?) and presumably has all sorts of LLM choices beyond Claude if necessary – it should be able to deliver with the best of them.

Panos explains that Alexa+ is rolling out in the States across the next few weeks and I'd imagine it'll soon extend to more regions.

To get the best out of Alexa+, you probably will want one of the latest devices as per this comment from Panos:

We will prioritize Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 device owners in the early access period. If you don’t have one of those devices, and want to be among the first to experience Alexa+, you can buy one now.

I like to have all the latest tech, but dear reader, I'm sorry to say I didn't bother buying any of these Echo Show X or Y devices. I couldn't be bothered. I couldn't see the point.

I do like the idea of the Echo Show 10 (the one that moves about, right?) but, again, I just couldn't be bothered. My wife couldn't see the point either - and to stick one of those in the kitchen... yeah she wasn't going to accept it.

Besides, we already have a Google Home sitting there that acts as both a photo display and timer (because, again, that's all its good for, from the point of view of the family members).

I think it might be time to get a new Echo!

If you're curious about the tech stack for Alexa+, this is the background you need.

And this is the link you need for the SDK kit to integrate your offerings directly into Alexa+.

Nice work Amazon. This is looking very exciting.

Here's the obligatory intro video: