Amazon introduces Alexa Plus, an AI-powered upgrade to its voice assistant, with a focus on enhanced conversational abilities, deeper integration with other services, and advanced information processing capabilities. Alexa Plus is designed to be a smarter, more conversational, and helpful digital assistant, capable of understanding and responding to user needs in a more natural and intuitive way.
Following years of development, Amazon’s next-generation digital assistant is nearly ready for public use. Panos Panay, senior vice president of devices and services, demoed Alexa Plus at the company’s 2025 devices event, providing a glimpse of how generative AI could supercharge a product millions of people use.
Capabilities
Alexa Plus boasts a range of advanced capabilities, including enhanced conversational abilities. It can now detect tone and mood, understand context, and maintain longer, more natural dialogues. The new model powering Alexa Plus can even respond appropriately to the user’s tone, with a completely new, more natural voice. Moreover, it’s only necessary to say “Alexa” once to wake the assistant, and it will then follow the conversation. Panay said Alexa Plus has contextual awareness, with the ability to “remember” earlier parts of a conversation. “You can have almost any conversation — that intimidation factor of AI is gone.”
A key feature of Alexa Plus is its deep integration with various aspects of the user’s life. It seamlessly connects with calendars, smart home devices, and popular apps, allowing for complex tasks like booking reservations, managing schedules, and controlling smart home devices with ease. Panay emphasized Alexa Plus’s role as a “conductor,” orchestrating the user’s digital and physical environment.
Transformed UI
The user interface has also undergone a significant transformation, particularly on Echo Show devices. A new, visually rich UI, reminiscent of the Echo Hub interface, features personalized widgets and “Alexicons,” animated visual cues that express Alexa’s personality. The visual focus highlights the importance of feedback and interaction, particularly for users with screen-equipped devices.
Smart home control has been drastically improved with advanced natural language control, enabling users to move devices, distribute audio spatially, and control various functions using intuitive voice commands. Alexa Plus can now understand and respond to commands like, “Alexa, move this to the right side of the room” or “Play the music everywhere but don’t wake the baby.”
Context awareness
Alexa Plus excels in processing and acting upon information. Users can share documents, such as legal contracts or schedules, with Alexa, and then ask specific questions or request actions based on the document’s content. For example, Alexa Plus can answer, “Am I able to add solar panels to my house?” based on shared HOA documents or extract practice times from a shared soccer schedule, and even set reminders or calendar events from that information. The user interface provides context awareness and further actionable options, like finding solar panel installers, price comparisons and scheduling a consultation.
The upgrade has seen improvements to existing Alexa features. Media searching has become more intuitive, able to deal with complex search requests, such as “What’s that song Bradley Cooper sings? It’s a duet.” In an ecosystem play, Prime Video has been further integrated allowing Alexa Plus to jump to specific scenes in movies with voice commands. The Ring camera integration allows Alexa to search footage with AI and answer questions about it.
Analyze and respond to user emotions
Alexa Plus has been trained on a wide range of parameters, including emotional intelligence, humor, and contextual understanding. This allows it to analyze and respond to user emotions, proactively offering assistance or calming reassurance when needed.
The live demonstration showcased the improved performance and responsiveness of Alexa Plus, a stark contrast to previous, less polished presentations. Amazon’s focus on creating a truly conversational, personalized, and actionable AI assistant appears to be coming to fruition, potentially setting a new standard for smart home interaction and personal information management.
Designed for children features
Amazon is also introducing “Stories with Alexa” and “Explore with Alexa,” two new features specifically designed for children. “Stories with Alexa” generates personalized, creative stories, while “Explore with Alexa” focuses on answering questions and providing educational content, such as riddles.
The diverse capabilities of Alexa Plus suggest the use of a combination of underlying AI models, with more powerful models for creative tasks and simpler models for others. Inference costs are a consideration for Amazon as they develop the product.
Amazon will begin rolling out early access to Alexa Plus starting next month, with wider availability expanding over the coming months in waves. Initially, Amazon is bringing Alexa Plus service to devices with screens, such as the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21.
With the introduction of Alexa Plus, Amazon is making a significant push into the AI-powered digital assistant market. The company is betting that the combination of advanced AI capabilities, deep integration with its services, and a focus on user experience will be enough to attract users and solidify its position in the increasingly competitive world of voice assistants. While challenges remain, particularly in ensuring smooth integration with third-party apps and addressing potential privacy concerns, Alexa Plus represents a major step forward for Amazon and the future of smart home technology.
