Amazon launched Alexa+, a revamped version of its voice assistant powered by generative AI models such as Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude via AWS' Amazon Bedrock.
Alexa+ will work with most of the 600 million Alexa devices in the field. Amazon will charge $19.99 a month, but Amazon Prime members get Alexa+ bundled in. Alexa+ will also be able to navigate the web to act on your behalf for things like scheduling and dinner reservations.
While Amazon's Alexa+ launch and portfolio of devices was consumer focused, the effort will also be a showcase for AWS and Amazon Bedrock.
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Daniel Rausch, vice president for Alexa and Echo, talked about the architecture behind Alexa's brain transplant. Key points about Alexa+ architecture include:
- Alexa+ leverages large language models (LLMs) including Amazon Nova and Anthropic.
- Alexa+ will select the best model for any task via a new routing system.
- Amazon forged agreements with major news organizations to ground answers.
- Alexa+ has a new architecture that orchestrates APIs at scale so it can book appointments and order items from the likes of GrubHub, OpenTable, Amazon, and a host of others.
- LLMs integrate with APIs, but can make several API calls in a row.
- Alexa+ will have the ability to carry out agentic actions and navigate web pages as you would.
