{"id":295114,"date":"2025-03-01T23:02:29","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T23:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/01\/amazons-generative-ai-vision-for-alexa-is-appealing-but-unproven\/"},"modified":"2025-03-01T23:02:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T23:02:29","slug":"amazons-generative-ai-vision-for-alexa-is-appealing-but-unproven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/01\/amazons-generative-ai-vision-for-alexa-is-appealing-but-unproven\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon's generative AI vision for Alexa is appealing, but unproven"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Amazon\u2019s long-awaited update to its assistant is almost here. About 18 months after the company first <\/a> built with generative AI, it unveiled Alexa+<\/a>, and early access will be available starting in March. Alexa+ will exist alongside the older Alexa and will cost $20 a month<\/a>, unless you have a Prime membership, which will make it free to use. The new assistant will come with all the modern upgrades that its contemporaries like the redesigned Siri or Gemini offer, like more conversational interaction, better contextual understanding and the ability to \u201csummarize complex topics\u201d and \u201cmake suggestions based on your interests.\u201d But it does one thing differently, and it\u2019s the way Amazon purports to integrate with third-party apps and the rest of the internet that could set it apart.<\/p>\n

At the presentation, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV Daniel Rausch outlined three ways the new assistant can integrate with other services you use. Firstly, it already works with \u201ctens of thousands\u201d of integrations already available, with Uber, Sonos, Samsung and Xbox being a few of the many logos that were displayed when Rausch said this. Presumably, that means Amazon worked with these partners to get their apps to play nicely with Alexa+ through their APIs.<\/p>\n

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Secondly, for the large swath of the online world that doesn\u2019t have apps or the resources to code an API just for Alexa+, the assistant should be able to scour the internet for their website and navigate it on your behalf. During the presentation, Rausch demonstrated how Alexa+ was able to go to the Thumbtack website to hire a professional to fix his oven. Instead of having to whip out a phone or laptop to click through menus himself, Rausch could just verbally tell Alexa+ what he needed and what times he was available, and the AI did the rest.<\/p>\n

\"Another
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Sam Rutherford for Engadget <\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

This example in particular struck me as very similar to Google\u2019s <\/a>, which, since way back in 2018, could call businesses on your behalf to book a table. All you had to do was tell Google what date and times you were considering, how many people were in your party and it would make the call for you, even speaking in a human-sounding voice to the restaurant. The way Alexa+ would click around websites on your behalf seems like Duplex on steroids.<\/p>\n

Finally, Alexa+ can work with the \u201cAI agents\u201d on other sites, so you can talk to just one assistant instead of dozens of chatbots. In the presentation, Rausch got Alexa+ to work with <\/a> to come up with a country-style song about bodega cats.<\/p>\n

After the company\u2019s presentation, I spoke with Rausch to get more clarity on how Alexa+ will work with the rest of the online world. For one, I wanted to know for sure if that third method would work with customer service chatbots from companies like Capital One, United Airlines and more. While Rausch said that he had no details to share on specific names or services, he did confirm that \u201cthe SDK is all about integrations like that,\u201d saying it\u2019s for people to use Alexa to connect with agents on their behalf to complete tasks.<\/p>\n

Rausch is aware that any friction at all in the adoption and setup process can turn people away. To that end, upgrading to Alexa+ should not require any additional sign-ins or authentication. You should be able to have all your connected appliances, security cameras and home routines carry over without any effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason that customers love Alexa is it takes away all the complexity,\u201d Rausch said. People don\u2019t need to remember the brand of the WeMo plug they bought, for example, to be able to tell Alexa to turn off a lamp. \u201cWe would never take that away,\u201d he said. When you\u2019re adding new services after upgrading to Alexa+, Rausch said you\u2019ll either do so \u201cin the ways that you do it today\u201d or that it\u2019ll get even easier, since \u201cAlexa can walk you through those setups in many more cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Using
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Sam Rutherford for Engadget <\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

According to Rausch, instead of having to \u201cdig around in the Alexa app, you just say \u2018Alexa, I want to set up a streaming account with Hulu' or something.\u201d You\u2019ll be presented with a QR code on an Echo device with a screen to facilitate that, and the assistant should guide users along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to say Alexa is an expert, and now an expert on herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amazon isn't the only company that has made its assistant perform tech support for users. This approach is very similar to how Siri can teach you how to, say, shoot a video in Cinematic mode or create a Genmoji. Where better to get help about a product you\u2019re using than the product itself? Why make me go to a different place for information?<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a customer experience perspective, customers just want the thing done,\u201d Rausch said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to be responsible or care about any of these things, right?\u201d He believes people just want the plumber or a reservation booked, and don\u2019t want to fuss around with websites and phone calls.<\/p>\n

People do want their digital assistant to be helpful and easy to use, but isn\u2019t it equally important that these AI services are accurate and reliable?<\/p>\n

When I asked Rausch how Amazon worked around the tendency of generative AI to hallucinate and sometimes spread misinformation, he said \u201cI actually think in the industry, there\u2019s been a mistake of thinking a model is a product.\u201d He also said \u201cLLMs are at the foundation of the architecture, but they\u2019re not the only thing answering the question.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Alexa+ is using a combination of Amazon\u2019s knowledge graphs, reliable sources on the internet and partnerships with authoritative outlets. \u201cOther products will simply give you an answer out of the LLM. If you're asking for an authoritative answer, that's not actually sometimes the way to get one. and I think that's what you're highlighting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rausch added that Amazon has \u201ctaken great care\u201d with Alexa. \u201cWill it make mistakes? Every piece of software makes mistakes,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re working hard to ground it in knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve yet to try out Alexa+ for myself, and everything we\u2019ve seen so far has been in highly controlled demos, so it\u2019s hard to tell what real world performance will be like. But if the new Alexa is truly able to work with third-party services in a way that\u2019s seamless and effective, it would not only bring Amazon back into the consumer AI race, but could possibly give it an advantage over the likes of Google, Apple and OpenAI. Considering Amazon really brought the idea of a virtual assistant into homes around the world, this could also have an impact that goes beyond the tech-savvy users of today\u2019s AI services.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/ai\/amazons-generative-ai-vision-for-alexa-is-appealing-but-unproven-140014416.html?src=rss
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Amazon\u2019s long-awaited update to its assistant is almost here. About 18 months after the company first built with generative AI, it unveiled Alexa+, and early<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":295115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadget"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhampshiredigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}