AI Alexa gets closer: presentation reportedly planned for the end of February

Amazon's voice assistant Alexa is apparently about to release the biggest overhaul of the service to date. According to media reports, the online shopping provider has invited media representatives to New York on February 26. The long-awaited generative AI version of Alexa is to be presented there.

The new version, which has been developed internally under the working titles “Banyan” and “Remarkable Alexa”, is set to offer significantly more extensive capabilities than the previous voice assistant. Instead of individual commands, the system will be able to conduct multistep conversations and act as an autonomous “agent”. For example, it could independently place or modify orders, reports the US news agency Reuters, citing anonymous sources within the company.

Anthropic AI as the basis

The technical basis is partly provided by the AI start-up Anthropic, in which Amazon has invested a total of eight billion US dollars. To avoid quality problems such as hallucinations, the originally planned launch has been postponed several times. A final decision on market readiness is to be made at a “go/no-go” meeting on February 14.

With the emergence of generative AI models, Amazon had fallen far behind technically with Alexa. Competitor Apple is also currently working on its voice assistant Siri. Apple is expected to release its first improvements this year. However, a major change towards an AI Siri is not forecast until 2026.

Paid service planned

Amazon is apparently also playing it safe with the planned release: The AI Alexa, which works on the existing hardware, is initially only to be made available free of charge to a select group of users. In the future, Amazon plans to monetize the new service with a premium version that will cost between 5 and 10 US dollars per month. The classic Alexa function will remain free of charge, but will no longer receive updates.

Given the widespread use of Echo devices, analysts believe that Amazon has a good chance of making the previously loss-making area profitable with AI-Alexa. Around half a billion Alexa devices are compatible with the new version. If only a tenth of users pay for the new service, Amazon could generate additional annual sales in the three-digit million range, they say.

(mki)