Highlights:

  • The enhanced assistant runs on LLMs hosted within Amazon Bedrock, the managed AI service from Amazon Web Services Inc.
  • In addition to its information retrieval features, Alexa includes agentic capabilities, enabling it to perform tasks autonomously using LLM-powered technology.

Recently, Amazon.com Inc. launched Alexa , a significant enhancement to its voice assistant, leveraging artificial intelligence and large language models to streamline complex tasks.

During a New York event, executives demonstrated the service’s capabilities, showcasing numerous features such as finding songs and ordering takeout from Uber Eats. Amazon states that Alexa can seamlessly perform actions across tens of thousands of services.

The enhanced assistant runs on LLMs hosted in Amazon Bedrock, the managed AI service from Amazon Web Services Inc. Alexa utilizes Amazon’s proprietary Nova series of foundation models in combination with algorithms from Anthropic PBC. This startup, known for its Claude LLM family, has received eight billion dollars in funding from Amazon over the past year.

Alexa is driven by models that gather information from over 200 media outlets. Amazon emphasized that news organizations like the Associated Press, Reuters, TIME, and USA Today will contribute content for the assistant. Additionally, Alexa tailors its responses using data on user preferences.

Consumers have the option to enhance Alexa ’s knowledge base by uploading their own data. The assistant can process product manuals, study guides, and various other files. According to Amazon, Alexa can leverage this information to respond to highly detailed queries as well as prompts that contain incomplete questions or ideas.

Beyond its information retrieval features, Alexa also offers agentic capabilities. In the context of artificial intelligence, an agent refers to an LLM-powered program designed to execute tasks with a high level of autonomy.

“Alexa is designed to take action, and is able to orchestrate across tens of thousands of services and devices — which, to our knowledge, has never been done at this scale. To achieve this, we created a concept called ‘experts’ — groups of systems, capabilities, APIs and instructions that accomplish specific types of tasks for customers,” Panos Panay, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of devices and services, wrote in a blog post recently.

During the Alexa launch event in New York, Amazon executives demonstrated how consumers can use the assistant to order groceries from Amazon Fresh. Alexa also interacts with third-party services, enabling users to book Uber rides, find concert tickets through Ticketmaster, make dinner reservations, and automate various multistep tasks.

Alexa also simplifies smart home management, allowing users to control appliances through natural language commands. Additionally, the assistant can be programmed to perform tasks autonomously, such as turning on a coffee machine every morning at 7 a.m.

“Providing devices that consumers use in their personal and professional lives is key for ultimate stickiness and adoption. Given that Amazon is already in people’s homes already, what will truly move the needle for the company is ultimately the distribution channel of the new agentic AI service,” said Inna Tokarev Sela, Founder and Chief Executive of AI startup Illumex.

Alexa will debut in the United States, and Amazon intends to expand it later. Amazon Prime subscribers can access it without the USD 19.99 monthly fee.