- Alexa+ has reached over 100,000 users, however, many promised features are still missing.
- Amazon aims to make Alexa+ more conversational and capable of handling third-party tasks.
- The rollout outpaces Apple’s new Siri, though both face technical challenges.
Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant, Alexa+, powered by generative AI, has now rolled out to more than 100,000 users, CEO Andy Jassy announced during the company’s latest earnings call.
While this is a small fraction of the 600 million Alexa devices in use, it marks steady progress since Alexa+ was first unveiled in February, with Amazon continuing its phased rollout.
Alexa+ is designed to enable more natural, conversational interactions and eventually perform tasks using third-party apps on users’ behalf-moving beyond the preset responses of classic Alexa and Siri.
However, several much-touted features, such as integration with apps like GrubHub, generating bedtime stories, and brainstorming gift ideas, remain unavailable in the current version.
Jassy acknowledged these gaps, promising that “a lot more functionality” will be added in the coming months.
Despite these limitations, Jassy positioned Alexa+ as one of the first consumer-facing, action-oriented AI agents, though he admitted the technology is still “primitive” and “inaccurate,” with current multi-step AI agents achieving only 30-60% accuracy.
Amazon’s goal is to boost its Nova Act web-browsing agent to 90% accuracy. The Alexa+ rollout is progressing faster than Apple’s LLM-powered Siri, which faces its delays.
Both companies are grappling with the complexities of integrating generative AI into legacy assistants.
Edited by Annette George
