The AI-powered overhaul of Amazon’s 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 its new website Alexa.com. This website is currently rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow customers to use Alexa+ online, just as they can now with other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Alexa-enabled devices, including Amazon’s own Echo smart speakers and screens, have a proven track record with more than 600 million units sold worldwide, but Amazon believes that for its AI assistant to be competitive, it needs to be everywhere, not just at home, but on the phone and on the web.
Additionally, this expansion could allow anyone to control Alexa+ in the future, even if they don’t have the device at home.
In conjunction with this expansion, Amazon is updating the Alexa mobile app to provide a more “agent-first” experience. In other words, it has a chatbot-style interface on the app’s homepage, making it look like a typical AI chatbot. (You used to be able to chat with Alexa within the app, but now the focus is on chat and other features are taking a backseat.)
The Alexa.com website allows customers to use Alexa+ for common tasks, such as exploring complex topics, creating content, and creating travel itineraries. But Amazon aims to differentiate its assistant from others by focusing on families and their needs at home. This includes controlling your smart devices, which was already possible with the original Alexa, but it also means doing things like updating your family calendar and to-do list, making dinner reservations, adding needed groceries to your Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods cart, searching for recipes and saving them to your library, and even planning a family movie night with personalized recommendations.
Recently, Amazon has integrated more services with Alexa+, including the addition of Angi, Expedia, Square, and Yelp, joining existing apps such as Fodor’s, OpenTable, Suno, Ticketmaster, Thumbtack, and Uber.
The Alexa.com website has a navigation sidebar that gives you quick access to commonly used Alexa features, so you can pick up where you left off with tasks like setting your thermostat, checking your calendar, or checking your shopping list.
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Additionally, Amazon aims to persuade customers to share access to their personal documents, emails, and calendars with Alexa+. In doing so, the company’s AI could become a kind of hub for managing household events, from children’s school vacation and soccer schedules to doctor’s appointments and other things families need to remember — like when the dog last got its rabies shot or what day the neighbor’s backyard barbecue is.
This is an area Amazon will have to grow in because it doesn’t have its own productivity suite or the wealth of personal data that rivals like Google already have for their customers. Instead, Amazon relies on tools that transfer and upload files to Alexa+ for AI to track. This is also a feature available on Alexa.com, and the information you share will be displayed on the Echo Show screen and can be managed.
If successful, this ability to control family members’ personal data could become Alexa’s biggest selling point.
“76% of what customers do with Alexa+ can’t be done with any other AI,” Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Echo, said in an interview with TechCrunch. “I think this is a very interesting statistic about Alexa+ for two reasons.
He continued, “One is because our customers expect Alexa to do unique things for them. You know, you can send Alexa a photo of an old family recipe and talk about it while you cook in the kitchen, substitute ingredients with things you have at home, and get the job done.”
However, he notes that an additional 24% use Alexa to do things that other AIs could do. This could indicate that they are shifting their AI usage to Alexa+.
Alexa.com will initially be available only to early access customers who sign in with their Amazon account. Amazon has been steadily rolling out early access since debuting Alexa+ early last year.
More than 10 million consumers now have access to Alexa+ and have two to three times more conversations on Alexa+ than the original Alexa assistant, according to Rausch. Specifically, he says people are using Alexa+ to make three times more purchases and five times more recipes than before. Heavy smart home users use Alexa+ 50% more than original Alexa for smart home control.
But across social media and online forums, there are complaints about Alexa+ misfires and mistakes. But Rausch believes these complaints are overexpressed online. He says the average number of people opting out after trying an Alexa+ experience is in the low single digits, or “effectively…nearly zero.”
“97% of Alexa devices support Alexa+, and customer adoption shows that Alexa has been used over many years and across multiple generations of devices,” Rausch added. “We support all of Alexa’s original features, and the Alexa+ experience will carry over the tens of thousands of services and devices that already had Alexa integrated.”
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