Amazon Alexa+ Is A Smarter AI Upgrade That Can Remember Your Recipes, Emails, And More

Amazon just announced its AI-powered update for Alexa, which delivers a host of new features and capabilties including the ability to read and remember your documents among many other things.

At a “Devices & Services” event in NYC today that lacked any new devices, Amazon announced “Alexa+,” its new AI-powered upgrade for its long-running voice assistant.

Amazon explains that there are four main areas of upgrade in Alexa+, starting with a more conversational voice assistant. Natural language understanding allows Alexa+ to have “natural, flowing conversations that feel genuine,” the company explains. Alexa+ is also more personalized over time, learning from how you interact with it and the tasks you have it perform. Tasks should also be upgraded with the help of AI, with Alexa+ able to handle “everything from date planning and gift shopping to travel arrangements and study help.” Finally, Alexa+ is said to be smarter with the help of generative AI.

So, what functional upgrades are there?

Alexa+ is able to create new “Routines” automations by voice, move music between rooms in the home, skip straight to a specific scene in a movie playing on Fire TV, and leverage Ring cameras and history to summarize events in and around your home and answer questions such as “did someone take out the garbage bins?”

One of the more impressive new features Amazon details is the ability to upload documents – including recipes – to Alexa+ and allow the AI to remember the details of that document to answer questions later on. This also works with emails, as you can “forward” emails to Alexa+ and later ask questions about those emails. Google supports similar functionality natively in Gemini, though only directly within the Gmail app.

Other features coming with Alexa+ include the ability to generate stories for kids, booking dinner reservations or Uber rides, and getting recommendations for local service providers.

Alexa+ is a paid upgrade on top of the existing voice assistant, costing $19.99/month unless you have Amazon Prime, in which case it’s free. Alexa+ is rolling out starting on Echo Show devices in the US “in the next few weeks” and then to all users in the US “over the coming months.”