By Nicole Nguyen

NEW YORK -- Alexa is (finally) getting smarter.

Amazon announced the revamped Alexa+ voice assistant, with "more personalized and conversational" generative-artificial-intelligence features, at a live event Wednesday. It starts rolling out to Echo devices with display next month, with a wider release over the subsequent months.

Panos Panay, head of devices and services at Amazon, fired off commands with natural phrasing: "Alexa, what's that song that Bradley Cooper sings and it's like a duet?" A speaker began playing "Shallow."

Panay followed up with: "Alexa, can you jump to the scene in the movie?" A nearby Fire TV opened the film "A Star Is Born," right to the climactic scene.

The company showed demos on the Echo Show 21, its largest smart display, but customers will be able to try Alexa+ on most existing Echo and Fire TV devices -- "almost every one we've shipped," Panay said -- as well as a new Alexa.com website and an updated phone app. The service is included with a Prime membership, and will cost $19.99 for nonsubscribers.

A false start

Alexa's evolution has been a sore spot. Amazon first promised a smarter Alexa in late 2023, soon after OpenAI's ChatGPT found the spotlight. But delays stalled Amazon's initial launch.

The company has racked up enormous losses trying to monetize the long-running assistant. By 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon had lost more than $25 billion on its devices business, which includes Alexa, as well as Echo, Kindle and FireTV hardware. At the time, a company spokeswoman said, "Hundreds of millions of Amazon devices are used by customers around the world, and to us, there is no greater measure of success."

At first, Alexa felt like a sci-fi gadget come alive, and it made its way to over 600 million devices worldwide. But now Amazon is playing catch-up in a space it pioneered. Compared with generative-AI bots such as ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, Amazon's bot seems limited. And next to natural-sounding, voice-based interfaces from Open AI, Meta Platforms and Microsoft, Alexa sounds...dumber.

In the home, Amazon might retain an edge, especially against rivals Apple and Alphabet's Google. The initial Apple Intelligence launch was meh, without a significant improvement in the way Siri understands users' voice commands. And Apple hasn't brought any of the incremental updates to its HomePod speakers. Google rolled out Gemini on Nest audio devices to a small subset of paying customers.

Alexa+ will need to rival the conversational mode found on its newest competitors -- or risk further disappointment. What makes the AI special, Amazon executives say, is its ability to integrate with smart-home devices and more personalized services.

And as Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy noted at the start of the presentation, Amazon's massive cloud business gives it a big advantage in developing and providing generative-AI services to its customers and clients alike.

A big step forward

Here are the Alexa+ features Amazon showed off Wednesday:

-- Natural language: You won't have to memorize "Alexa-speak." In the demo, the bot understood, "The Red Sox recently retooled their team in the offseason, is that right?" and responded with the team's new players.

-- AI agent: After hearing "Book our usual Friday night date spot," Alexa found a reservation on OpenTable. Then the bot texted the babysitter to request availability.

When Amazon Alexa lead Daniel Rausch asked the assistant to look for tickets to a Boston Red Sox game, the results were too pricey. He asked if Alexa could set up a ticket monitor to alert him if prices dropped below $200.

When Rausch complained that his Miele oven was broken, Alexa used the online service Thumbtack to book a repair shop, displaying the request status in a widget.

-- Camera input: The demo's Echo Show 21 has a built-in camera. Panay asked Alexa to look out at the audience. It responded that the attendees have "all eyes on you, laptops at the ready, soaking in every word."

Alexa can also sift through footage captured by Ring security cameras. "Can you see if anybody walked a dog in the last couple of days?" or "Have you seen any packages around the house yesterday?" conjured relevant clips from Panay's own front doorbell.

-- Memory: Alexa can store preferences to inform future requests. "Can you remember that Mary likes Greek and Indian food and is a vegetarian but doesn't like peanut butter?" When Panay asked for a dinner recommendation, the bot spun up "family-friendly and Mary-approved" recipes.

-- Document analysis: Alexa+ reviewed a homeowners association agreement and answered questions like, "Am I allowed to install solar panels?"

Alexa+ also answered questions about a handwritten zucchini bread recipe and a kid's next soccer practice schedule. It was able to add future practice dates to a calendar and set night-before reminders.

The caveats

AI is tricky. Amazon will need to prevent the freewheeling Alexa+ from giving misleading or wrong information to millions of customers.

Last month, Apple had to pause a relatively straightforward AI feature that summarized news notifications because the summaries were occasionally misleading or inaccurate. The same feature repeatedly identified my colleague Joanna Stern's son as her husband.

Another concern: How user-friendly will Alexa+ be on devices without a screen? The onstage examples were seamless but they relied on third-party services such as OpenTable and Uber, so additional logins are required. There was also no discussion of using this with popular services such as Google Calendar or Outlook.

After a decade of asking Alexa to set timers and do other basic stuff, I am ready for this old dog to learn new tricks -- or even improve its current skill set. I regularly get into shouting matches with my Echo speakers, even for something simple like lowering the volume of my music. Alexa, can your AI upgrade fix that?

We'll have to wait to review the improved assistant in our own homes to see.

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Write to Nicole Nguyen at nicole.nguyen@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 26, 2025 12:44 ET (17:44 GMT)

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