Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted at an improved, “agentic” version of the company’s Alexa assistant during Amazon’s Q3 2024 earnings call — one that can take certain actions on a user’s behalf.
“I think that the next generation of these assistants and generative AI applications will be better at not just answering questions and summarizing, indexing, and aggregating data, but also taking actions,” he said. “And you can imagine us being pretty good at that with Alexa.”
Jassy added that Amazon continues to “re-architect the brain” of Alexa with “a new set of foundation models” that the company plans to announce “in the near future.”
Amazon, which first announced that it would revamp Alexa with generative AI in 2023, is said to be replacing its own models with AI startup Anthropic’s after encountering technical challenges. (Amazon is an investor in Anthropic.) At one point in the redesign process, the unreleased, upgraded Alexa reportedly struggled to turn on smart lights and took up to six seconds to respond.
The new Alexa, code-named “Remarkable Alexa” internally, will reportedly cost $5 to $10 per month, offered alongside a less capable free plan. Some reports indicated that it would arrive in October, but it’s evidently suffering delays.