Amazon CEO says 100,000 users now have Alexa+ | TechCrunch

Amazon’s upgraded virtual assistant powered by means of generative AI, Alexa+, has rolled out to over 100,000 customers, CEO Andy Jassy stated at the corporate’s income name Thursday.

Whilst that’s a a long way cry from the 600 million Alexa units available in the market, the corporate is making some growth at the rollout of Alexa+, which was once first unveiled in February. On the time, Amazon stated that Alexa+ would roll out in waves over the approaching months.

Amazon’s new virtual assistant objectives to let customers communicate with it in a extra herbal taste, and in the end have agentic talents that let it to make use of third-party apps on a consumer’s behalf. Alexa+ must have the ability to generate authentic responses at the fly, just like the voice modes in OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, fairly than the predetermined responses of the outdated Alexa and Siri programs.

On the other hand, as The Washington Put up reported at release, the Alexa+ that’s rolling out nowadays generation/2025/03/31/amazon-alexaplus-delay/”>lacks one of the vital key options the corporate demoed in February. The record notes that, at release, Alexa+ didn’t be able to use 0.33 occasion apps like GrubHub, generate a bedtime tale for youngsters, or brainstorm a present thought. It’s unclear when the ones options will make it into Alexa+.

“We’ve got much more capability that we plan so as to add in coming months,” Jassy stated at the name.

Throughout his opening feedback, Jassy claimed that Alexa+ is likely one of the first action-oriented AI brokers for customers. However he famous that this generation remains to be fairly “primitive” and “misguided.” These days, maximum multi-step AI brokers have a low accuracy price, between 30% and 60%, the Amazon CEO stated. Jassy set a function for the corporate’s web-browsing agent that powers Alexa+, Nova Act, to succeed in 90% accuracy on this area.

Amazon’s rollout of Alexa+ appears to be progressing sooner than Apple’s rollout of its new, LLM-powered Siri. When requested concerning the new Siri delays on Apple’s Thursday income name, which befell concurrently wiith Amazon’s, CEO Tim Prepare dinner stated the corporate wanted “extra time to finish the paintings.”

Alongside the street to supercharge legacy virtual assistants with generative AI, each Apple and Amazon have reportedly run into snags and delays. One of the vital largest hiccups are round getting LLMs to make use of equipment and combine with different programs. Doing so permits Alexa and Siri to finish sensible duties akin to surroundings timers and studying texts, however enforcing it has confirmed tougher than anticipated.