Amazon has been working on an AI-powered upgrade for Alexa for some time, but it hasn't made it to users yet. However, it looks like we finally have a release window, and it's coming sooner than you might think.
The new Alexa is due to be released in October this year
According to insider information from the Washington Post, Amazon's long-awaited upgrade to AI-powered Alexa is set to launch in October (subscription required). With rival AI voice assistants becoming increasingly popular, Amazon seems ready to up the ante and introduce users to its revamped Alexa soon. As mentioned, the new AI-powered Alexa could be available with a subscription price of up to $10 per month. However, the original “classic Alexa” will still be available for free. Amazon is expected to finalize pricing, subscription details, and the new product name within this month.
Set to launch just weeks before the presidential election, the update will introduce a new feature called Smart Briefing, which delivers daily AI-generated summaries of news articles tailored to each user's reading habits.
The redesigned Alexa, sometimes called Remarkable Alexa or Project Banyan in internal documents, is also expected to come with a number of other new features, including recipe recommendations, a kid-friendly chatbot and possibly new tools for conversational shopping.
Video Credits – Amazon
In addition to the new Alexa, the company is preparing to launch the previously rumored Metis project, a web-based chatbot designed to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
The redesigned Amazon Alexa is designed to sound more conversational and engaging. It will recognize users' individual voices and even ask questions about them to provide better help later.
All of this fits perfectly with the latest trends in AI and voice assistants. For example, ChatGPT has started rolling out its new voice mode that can capture your emotions to enable more authentic chats in real time. In addition, Apple is revamping Siri to make it sound more conversational and natural. Now Alexa is also joining this trend. So companies are striving to make their assistant more human, which can be a little worrying in my opinion.