According to reports, Amazon Launches the first major overhaul of its Alexa voice assistant since it was introduced more than a decade ago, embedding it with generative artificial intelligence.

The effort carries significant weight at Amazon, which has invested billions of dollars in Alexa since its launch in 2014 in the hope of integrating the service with a range of devices and ultimately driving sales on its main e-commerce website.

"Alexa knows almost every instrument in your life, your schedule, your smart home, your preferences, the devices you're using, the people you're connected to, the entertainment you love and uses many of the apps you use, a lot of the services you need," says Panos Panay, Amazon's head of devices and services, at a launch event in New York.


Panay says the new service is called Alexa+, echoing the nomenclature of the higher tier of many tech and streaming service offerings. Alexa+ is free for Amazon Prime members and $19.99 a month for non-Prime users. The service, which was live as of Wednesday, will be available to some users in March, with the rollout expanding to more people over time.

Panay demonstrated how Alexa can store, through prompts, customer preferences - for example, that a household member is vegetarian and prefers Greek and Italian food but eschews peanut butter. It can be used to make dinner reservations and send timed texts or reminders.

The service can connect to Amazon products, such as Ring doorbells, to show recordings from its cameras.

Amazon’s original Echo was a surprising success when it debuted in 2014. But in the decade since Alexa arrived in our living rooms, Amazon has struggled to monetize its hardware division, even as its bet on cheap hardware helped make Alexa the dominant voice assistant.