E-commerce giant Amazon held its Devices and Services event in New York today. At the event, Amazon made some major announcements, including the availability and price of its new Alexa Plus assistant. It’s worth mentioning that the company first announced the major upgrades to Alexa in September 2023, but after multiple delays, it has finally launched the Alexa Plus assistant.
Amazon’s Alexa Plus assistant will be free for Prime users
Amazon offers Alexa Plus at a price of $19.99 per month for all users. It will be available to all Amazon users in the US over the “next few weeks”. Soon after, the e-commerce platform will launch in other major markets where it operates. It could be the first AI chatbot to actually be available on speakers as none of the AI assistants like Google’s Gemini are available on any home products.
It’s worth mentioning that Amazon’s Alexa Plus AI assistant will be available for free if you already have a subscription to Amazon Prime subscription. However, if you don’t have a subscription to the Prime service, it costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year. The company said that the new Alexa assistant will be available “subsequently in waves in the coming months” to the users of the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 devices.
Alexa Plus is a new artificial intelligence upgrade to Amazon’s voice assistant
Amazon announced its new AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant delivers new features and capabilities. Compared to the earlier version, the new Alexa assistant can read and remember your documents, among many other things. The company says that Alexa Plus has four main areas of upgrade. These include a more conversational voice assistant and natural language understanding, which allows it to have “natural, flowing conversations that feel genuine.”
Furthermore, Alexa Plus is more personalized over time as it learns from how you interact with it and the tasks you have it perform. The new assistant can carry on conversations by uttering its wake word. Also, there are vision capabilities and the functionalities to take photos and analyze images too.