Amazon has been focused on bringing generative AI to Alexa for the past few years, hitting multiple delays in launching new features that the company first announced in September 2023. The delayed Alexa 2.0 was poised for a 2025 release, and Amazon held a late February event where it made big announcements for the artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant.
Amid rumors of Alexa 2.0 shortcomings, Amazon skipped its 2024 Devices and Services event, where the company typically announces new Alexa features and hardware devices. Instead, it unveiled Alexa+ last month, the voice assistant’s generative AI features, and finally put an ETA on its launch.
“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. This made the technology much more accessible, so people can see the power and magic of what generative AI can do,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said.
The event, which took place on Feb. 26 in New York City, was Panos Panay’s first since joining the Devices and Services division after his Microsoft exit. In addition to new Alexa features, Amazon also made other announcements.
Everything announced at Amazon’s February 2025 event
Generative AI in Alexa+
Giving Alexa the power of generative AI was already expected to be the star announcement from Amazon — and it was. During the last Devices and Services event in 2023, Amazon announced a gen AI-powered ‘Alexa+’ or Alexa Plus and a new user interface coming to an Echo device near you, and the company is now making it more real than ever before.
Panay likened the evolution of Alexa and its obstacle-ridden road toward generative AI to a symphony warming up before a concert and how the conductor raises the baton to transform “disconnected sounds into a masterpiece.”
Alexa+ will reply with a more natural cadence, handle multiple prompts in a session, and generate content instead of providing canned answers to questions. It will also feature greater customization power to remember user preferences (think like ChatGPT’s Memory) for more productive user interactions, learning “the rhythm of your life,” according to Panay.
Aside from all of this, Alexa+ has contextual awareness, so it can hold long conversations and remember what you asked before your last questions instead of giving canned responses from Alexa Answers contributors. As Amazon demoed, it can also read and process documents for you to answer questions, like school calendars or an HOA CC&R document.
Alexa+ launch date
The new Alexa+ will begin rolling out next month to some users in an early access manner, with a gradual rollout after that.
Amazon said little about the new Alexa after the 2023 event, with rumors suggesting that the company was repeatedly forced to delay its gen AI launch due to deficient performance. Thankfully, Amazon seems to have finally smoothed out its Alexa 2.0.
While Alexa dominates the US market for virtual assistants, preferred by two-thirds of Americans, it has also recently fallen behind other assistants, including Google and, most recently, Siri. The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in recent years triggered a tidal wave of generative AI that pushed other virtual assistants ashore. At the same time, Alexa appears to have sunk to the bottom of the ocean — until now.
The new breed of gen AI-powered virtual assistants — ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot powered by OpenAI’s technologies, Google Assistant-powered by Gemini, and Siri powered by Apple LLMs — have surged ahead in the past two years. We can only wait to see how well the new Alexa+, powered by Amazon Bedrock models, including Nova and Anthropic, will perform in real-world scenarios.
Alexa+ subscription tiers
Amazon’s Alexa+ will work behind a subscription service that will cost $20 monthly but will be free for Prime subscribers. A subscription-based system has been rumored for about a year, so this didn’t come as a surprise, but the rumors said it was planned to cost between $5-$10 monthly, not $20. At this cost, Alexa+ is the same price as a ChatGPT Plus subscription.
The “Classic Alexa” will still be available for users who prefer not to pay the monthly fee, though it’s not known how long Amazon plans to maintain the current version.
A new Echo Show user interface
Amazon also announced a new revamped platform for the Echo Show with the launch of Alexa+. The new look in the Echo Show interface seems like it will be available in the larger Echo Show displays for now. Alexa+ will also have integrations with your Ring subscriptions to provide a new experience on the Echo Show.
The redesigned Echo Show user interface features a sleeker layout for your favorite widgets and a cohesive look throughout the screen. Alexa+ is bringing adaptive display to the large Echo Show devices, the Echo Show 15 and Echo Show 21, to show a simplified view from afar that transitions to a customized screen when you approach the device.
