Amazon’s AI assistant comes to the web with Alexa.com

Summary

Amazon’s AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow customers to use Alexa+ online, much as you can do today with other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. While Alexa-powered devices, including Amazon’s own Echo smart speakers and screens, have a well-established footprint with over 600 million devices sold worldwide, Amazon believes that for its AI assistant to be competitive, it will need to be everywhere — not just in the home, but also on the phone and on the web. Plus, the expansion could later give anyone a way to interact with Alexa+, even if they don’t have a device in their home. Related to this expansion, Amazon is updating its Alexa mobile app, which will now offer a more “agent-forward” experience. Or, in other words, it’s putting a chatbot-style interface on the app’s homepage, making it seem more like a typical AI chatbot. (While you could chat with Alexa before in the app, the focus is now on the chatting — while the other features take a backseat.) Image Credits:Screenshot of the new Alexa app On the Alexa.com website, customers can use Alexa+ for common tasks, for instance exploring complex topics, creating content, and making trip itineraries. However, Amazon aims to differentiate its assistant from others by focusing on families and their needs in the home. That includes controlling smart devices, as you already could with the original Alexa, but it also means doing things like updating the family’s calendar or to-do list, making dinner reservations, adding grocery items you need to your Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods cart, finding recipes and saving them to a library, or even planning the family movie night with personalized recommendations. More recently, Amazon has bee...