Amazon has launched the enhanced version of the Alexa voice assistant, called Alexa+, in Canada, affording more natural language conversations thanks to the power of GenAI.
Alexa+ is a smarter, more proactive AI assistant that brings a heightened level of intelligence, responsiveness, and usefulness to the experience, says the company. Available in Early Access phase for English-speaking Canadians, conversations are natural and fluid as you engage in dialogues to ask questions or get information. It can understand what you mean, not just what you say, replying with nuance.
Specifically for Canadians, it can recognize regional expressions, knows information about Canadian sports teams, has an appreciation for homegrown music and culture, and can navigate distinctly Canadian topics.
Built on advanced large language models (LLMs) through Amazon Bedrock, it can effortlessly coordinate devices and services through agentic capabilities to get things done on your behalf. For example, it can control and manage smart home devices, connect to your favourite music streaming service, make reservations through OpenTable, help plan itineraries with Fodors, provide news headlines from CBC, and connect you with Canadian artists and music scenes.
You can also use Alexa+ to help wih searching for items and even buying them online. It will make useful suggestions based on your interests. Amazon is expanding its partnerships with services like Yelp, Uber Eats, Suno, and TripAdvisor, coming soon.
The service is also personalized to each individual user, adapting to your needs over time, including your preferences, context, and routines. It can remember your favourite music, for example, what books you have read, and the foods or types of foods you want to avoid or are allergic to. It can adapt tone and emotions based on conversations, and speaks uniquely to each person in the household using visual and voice ID, adjusting responses accordingly.
Tell Alexa+ about your daily routine, for example, travel preferences, even how you want to unwind after work, and it will use that knowledge to help with the flow of your day. This might involve dimming the nights after a long day, queuing up a favourite playlist, and suggesting a short meditation session before bed. When suggesting recipes, it can remember foods that family members don’t like or allergies and take this into consideration. It can do things like raise the thermostat right before it knows you’ll be home, start brewing coffee in the morning, or remind you when a new episode of your favourite TV show is out.
For shopping, you can simply tell Alexa when you are running low on something, and it will ask about your preferred brand and price to confirm details before placing an order, through Amazon, of course. If you’re planning a dinner party, it can help you with the shopping list. It can also track package deliveries, advise you of price drop on items you have on your list, and help you discover new products. While browsing on Amazon, it can help you compare features, summarize reviews, and suggest complementary items. This is all, of course, smart marketing to help increase Amazon sales.
When controlling your connected smart home devices, you can give more contextual commands, like to play your favourite artist, then ask it to move the audio to a speaker in another room when you move there. You can also ask it to play something everywhere, or do thing like show you the front door on an Echo Show smart display to see footage from your Ring camera. You can even give statements like “I’m cold” and it will intelligently know to turn up the heat, or “it’s too dark” to have it turn on some lights. Create custom routines by voice as well to combine multiple actions, like the lights, music, and coffee machine coming on for a good morning routine. You don’t have to rely on the app.
Privacy is the big question, of course. Amazon says customers can review their interactions and use the Alexa Privacy dashboard to control privacy settings. Alexa-enabled devices are designed with multiple layers of protection, so a visual indicator lets you know when Alexa is listening to their request.
Alexa+ costs $28/mo. but is free for all Prime members. It will be free during the Early Access phase, which has begun rollout in Canada. To be among the first to try it, purchase a new eligible Echo device. Customers who already own certain Echo devices can sign up to try Alexa+ Early Access by visiting www.amazon.ca/newalexa.
New Echo devices purpose-built for Alexa+ include the Echo Show 8, Echo Show 11, Echo Dot Max, and Echo Studio.