The long -awaited Amazon update for his assistant is almost here. About 18 months after the first company built with generative AI, this published by Alexa+And early access will be available since March. Alexa+ will exist with the old alexa and Will Costs $ 20 a monthIf you do not have the main membership that will free its use. The new assistant will be delivered with all modern updates that his contemporaries, such as the redesigned Siri or Gemini, such as more conversational interaction, the best contextual understanding and the ability to “summarize complex topics” and “make sentences based on your interests”. But this makes one thing differently, and this is how Amazon intends to integrate with third-party applications and the rest of the Internet that can highlight it.
At the presentation, Vice President Alexa and Fire TV Daniel Raush spoke about three ways of integration with other services that you use. Firstly, he is already working with already available “tens of thousands” of integration, and Uber, Sonos, Samsung and Xbox were several of many logos that were displayed when Raush said this. Presumably, this means that Amazon worked with these partners to force his applications to play well with Alexa+ through their API.
Secondly, for a large strip of online world, in which there are no applications or resources for coding the API only for Alexa+, the assistant must be able to search the Internet for his website and navigate in it on your behalf. During the presentation, Raush demonstrated how Alexa+ was able to go to the Thumbtack website to hire a professional to fix her oven. Instead of pulling out a phone or laptop to click through the menu, Raush could simply verbally say Alexa+, what he needed and at what time he was available, and AI did the rest.
This example, in particular, seemed to me very similar to Google Which since then in 2018 could call business on your behalf to book a table. All you had to do is tell Google, what date and times you considered, how many people were at your party, and this will call you, even speaking in the restaurant. The way Alexa+ presses on websites on your behalf seems to be duplex on steroids.
Finally, Alexa+ can work with “AI agents” on other sites, so you can only talk to one assistant instead of dozens of chat bots. In the presentation, Raush forced Alexa+ to work with To come up with a country style song about Bodega Cats.
After the presentation of the company, I talked with Raush to get more clarity in how Alexa+ will work with the rest of the online world. On the one hand, I would like to know for sure whether this third method will work with chat bots of customer service from companies such as Capital One, United Airlines and much more. While Raush said that he had no details to share specific names or services, he confirmed that “SDK is all that are similar to integration”, saying that people can use Alexa to communicate with agents on their behalf to perform tasks.
Raush knows that any friction in general in general in the process of adoption and settings can turn away from people. To this end, updating to Alexa+ should not require additional signs or authentication. You must be able to have all your connected devices, security cameras and home procedures without any effort.
“The reason why customers love Alexa is that it removes all the difficulty,” Raush said. People do not need to remember how the WEMO PLUG brand, which they bought, for example, to tell Alexa to turn off the lamp. “We will never take it away,” he said. When you add new services after updating to Alexa+, Raush said that you will either do it “as you do today”, or that it will become even easier, since “Alexa can lead you through these attitudes in many other cases”.
According to Rausha, instead of “delving into the alexa application, you just say:” Alex, I want to configure the stream account with Hulu “or something like that.” You will be presented with a QR code for an echo -device with a screen to facilitate this, and the assistant must direct users along the way.
“We like to say that Alex is an expert, and now the expert is on himself.”
Amazon is not the only company that forced his assistant to carry out technical support for users. This approach is very similar to how Siri can teach you, say, to shoot a video in a cinematic mode or create a Genmoji. Where is it better to get help about the product that you use, what is the product itself? Why should I go to another place to obtain information?
“From the point of view of customer service, customers just want to do this,” said Raush. “They should not be responsible or take care of anything of these things, right?” He believes that people just want a plumber or reservation to be booked, and do not want to fight websites and phone calls.
People want their digital assistant to be useful and easy to use, but is it not important that these artificial intelligence services be accurate and reliable?
When I asked Rausha how Amazon works with the tendency of generative AI to hallucinations and sometimes dissolve misinformation, he said: “I really think in the industry, a mistake arose, thinking that the model is a product.” He also said: “LLM is the basis of architecture, but they are not the only thing when answering a question.”
In other words, ALEXA+ uses a combination of Amazon knowledge schedules, reliable sources on the Internet and partnerships with authoritative outlets. “Other products will simply give you an answer from LLM. If you are asking for an authoritative answer, in fact this is not a way to get it. And I think that this is what you identify, ”he said.
Raush added that Amazon “took care of Alex very much. “Will it make mistakes? Each software makes mistakes, ”he said. “But we work hard to ground him with knowledge.”
I have not tried Alexa+ for myself, and everything that we have seen so far was in highly controlled demonstrations, so it is difficult to say what real performance will be similar to. But if the new Alexa is really capable of working with third -party services in such a way that it is trouble -free and effective, this will not only return Amazon to the consumer artificial art, but can also give it an advantage, like Google, Apple and Openai. Considering that Amazon really brought the idea of a virtual assistant in the house around the world, it can also have an influence that goes beyond the technical users of modern AI services.