- Amazon literally invites radiating ‘Alexa’ teasing a major update
- The new Alexa could be an autonomous AI agent …
- … but it might also cost $ 5- $ 10 a month
Amazon sent invitations to a major product launch event in New York City yesterday, containing lots of Alexa tip (including a well -known nuance of blue). And now some details have hidden in the invitation plus some fresh rumors given us a clearer idea of what we can expect on February 26.
We missed the first Alexa AI tip because it is impossible to spot when looking at a single invitation. But take one of each of the five different invitation styles Amazon distributed and you will see that they spell “Alexa”-with our odd appearance ‘A’ is actually an ‘e’. The puzzle was cracked off the rim.
This means that Amazon is all-but-guaranteed to show the long-awaited, next General Alexa, which we have been waiting for on February 26 and we can even see some new hardware for this AI to call home.
We have now also got some potential details of exactly what Alexa AI will do. According to Pakinomist – which quotes three people familiar with the project – the new and improved Alexa assistant will have a few key upgrades.
First, it will seem to be better at understanding the natural speech and context of your requests, as the new AI will be able to respond to multiple prompts in a order.
We are not sure what this will look like, but we imagine a cooking environment where you quickly ask Alexa to start a timer for 30 minutes, plus a recipe to prepare the next part of your meal and to it have to play a relaxing playlist to help you handle the pressure a little easier. Instead of saying ‘Hey Alexa’ between each prompt, you could just ask them back-to-back that you can with a favor like Gemini Live.
Next, it is said that Alexa will be able to act as AI agent – which means it can perform tasks on behalf of users without needing their direct involvement. Again, it is not clear what form this will take, but maybe Alexa will teach your routines and automatically turn off smart lights if you know you are not at home. That said, we are a little shy that Alexa can act autonomously – without the right protection, an agent says with access to our credit card and the world’s largest online marketplace as a recipe for disaster.
Eventually, while Alexas AI upgrade apparently will be free with limited use at first, Amazon has reportedly floated the idea of charging $ 5- $ 10 a month for it (probably about £ 5- £ 10 / AU $ 8-A $ 16). Fortunately, classic Alexa could remain as an always available free option.
Will Alexa Ai be worth paying for?
Based on the leaks so far, we are not convinced that Alexa AI will be useful enough to justify pay for. It doesn’t sound quite significant enough to tempt people who only spend it as a vocal -activated timer and light switch, but Amazon could give us more compelling reasons when February 26 rolls around.
You may have missed it in the shower caused by like Chatgpt, Google Gemini, Apple Intelligence and Deepseek, but Alexa has been surprisingly absent from the AI Revolution. The smart speaker assistant who was once synonymous with home-ai now feels mute as it struggles to engage in natural conversation with the same fluidity as Gemini Live, and with answers to queries that contain much less depth than as GPT-4O.
This is apparently not through a lack of trials. Reports have suggested that “technical challenges” have had Alexa’s next re -grade back as it struggled with frequent hallucinations (when an AI constitutes information or makes a mistake) and continues to perform the basic smart home tasks Alexa can do right now (such as to turn on for smart lights).
These snags apparently set up AI’s release date back to 2025, but it seems that Amazon is finally ready to publish his efforts.
