Feb. 26 (UPI) — During the Amazon Devices event in New York City on Wednesday, Amazon unveiled the Alexa Plus personal assistant that uses generative artificial intelligence.
“Up until a couple of years ago, it was pretty difficult to invent with AI, and that changed with the arrival of foundational models and generative AI,” Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy told attendees at Amazon’s New York City tech event.
“This made the technology much more accessible,” Jassy said, “so people can see the power and magic of what generative AI can do.”
The new Alexa Plus version also is called “Alexa+” and will work on Amazon’s Echo device and has a new user interface to improve the experience for users.
Alexa Plus will respond to respective users with a more natural-sounding voice while working on several prompts at the same time.
Instead of providing users with standardized answers to questions, the new generative AI feature will customize answers by using the latest information available to it.
Users also can customize their Alexa Plus smart assistants so it will remember their respective user preferences and provide them with more personalized responses while enhancing the user experience.
The new Alexa Plus also offers contextual awareness, which makes it possible to hold long conversations with the device, which can recall a user’s prior questions and provide new answers within the context of the most recent interactions instead of repeated canned responses created by Alexa Answers contributors.
The new Alexa Plus version also can read and process documents and use the textual information to provide more personalized responses.
Examples of documents that Alexa Plus could read and process include work calendars, HOA documents and other information that is more personal in nature.
Amazon officials have planned a gradual rollout of the new Alexa Plus personal assistant starting in late March.
The Alexa Plus personal assistant service requires a subscription but is free for those who have Amazon Prime subscriptions.