Amazon is going to present the new version of Alexa, and it will be more powerful than ever!

© Unsplash/Jonathan Borba

The fateful moment is approaching. Amazon has started sending out invitations for an event that will take place on February 26 in New York. On the program, the presentation of the new version of Alexa, completely reworked thanks to generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Capacities increased tenfold

We’ve been waiting for this moment since 2023, when the e-commerce giant announced that it would harness the rise of AI to improve its voice assistant. Because technology is completely reshuffling the cards in this sector, like the highly anticipated iteration of Siri boosted by generative AI.

Expect change with, probably, the biggest update to Alexa in a decade. Powered by powerful language models, the assistant should be able to offer more natural conversations and handle multiple requests at once.

Alexa will be able to adapt to each user, able to remember their preferences in terms of food or music in order to offer specific recommendations, for places to go to a restaurant for example. Another new feature is that the assistant should also have AI agent skills, meaning thatit will be able to act in the user's place to make a reservation in a restaurant or buy tickets. No step-by-step instructions will be necessary.

© Amazon

You will have to pay…

Developing such a product has not been easy for Amazon, so much so that its presentation, initially planned for October, had to be postponed. Not only did the firm have to deal with the problems of hallucinations that affect all generative AI, it also faced significant technical challenges, as the algorithms of the old version of Alexa were far too simple to support these new features.

Given the number of users that the assistant has, with several billion requests per day, Amazon's work has simply been colossal. And this is partly why the AI-boosted version of Alexa will not be available for free. Enough to overcome the financial abyss that this product represents for the company ? Because the division that develops the assistant is said to have recorded huge losses of 25 billion dollars between 2017 and 2021…

Amazon should also unveil new connected objects, including Echo speakers, as well as Fire TVs.

• Amazon should present the version of Alexa boosted with AI on February 26.
• The assistant will be able to have more natural conversations and handle multiple requests at once.
• It will also be able to remember users' preferences and perform complex tasks for them, such as booking a restaurant.

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