Ever since ChatGPT became hugely successful, Amazon has been planning to launch its own revamped AI assistant. Back in January, we reported that Amazon is working on a paid version of Alexa that will offer advanced AI chat capabilities. The paid version of Alexa will be called Alexa Plus, and it will offer a more personalized and conversational AI experience. Recently, Reuters reported that Amazon is considering charging between $5 and $10 a month to access the Alexa Plus service.
Today, The Washington Post revealed all the features that will be part of the upcoming Alexa Plus subscription service, which is expected to launch in October this year.
Alexa Plus will be able to recognize the individual voices of customers and ask questions about them to be more helpful. Additionally, the voice experience will feel more conversational and charismatic compared to the current Alexa experience.
The flagship feature of Alexa Plus will be the new “Smart Briefing.” As the name suggests, Smart Briefing will deliver daily, AI-generated summaries of news articles selected based on a customer’s preferences. This is not an entirely new feature, as Google Assistant already has a similar feature called News Briefings. According to Amazon’s internal document, Smart Briefings can create a daily habit and drive recurrent engagement for Alexa Plus.
Alexa Plus will also be able to help customers find recipes. A new chatbot targeting children will allow them to “have back-and-forth, exploratory conversations with Alexa about any topic under the sun.” There will be a new conversational shopping experience. For example, customers will be able to ask questions like “What colors do the shoes come in?”, “What are the ingredients?”, or “Do you have any deals on headphones?”. The new Shopping Scout feature can notify customers when a particular product goes on sale.
Along with the regular voice feature, Amazon is also planning to launch a web UI version of Alexa for the first time. The new Alexa web experience will directly compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.
Despite the push for the premium Alexa Plus subscription, Amazon will continue to offer a free version of Alexa with a limited set of features.
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