Event Recap: Amazon Unveils Alexa+
What an AI-enhanced Alexa means for brands
On Wednesday, Amazon held a press event in New York City to unveil an AI-enhanced Alexa. Aptly named “Alexa+,” this new-and-improved version of Amazon’s flagship voice assistant marks the re-introduction of a previously dominant player into the ongoing AI arms race.
As OpenAI, Google, and Apple make strides in voice and multimodal AI, Amazon is doubling down on its biggest in-home advantage: the prevalence of Echo speakers and Fire TV devices, and Alexa being the primary interface for those devices.
With what Panos Panay, Amazon’s devices and services chief, called a “complete re-architecture,” Alexa+ is a significant upgrade for the familiar voice assistant; Amazon is positioning it as a proactive AI agent capable of handling complex tasks, anticipating user needs, and integrating seamlessly into daily life.
For brand marketers and advertisers, this represents a game-changing shift, opening the door to more frictionless and intelligent consumer engagement within the home. Here’s what every innovation-minded brand marketer should know about Alexa+ and the potential opportunities it could unlock for brands looking to engage with consumers.
Alexa+ as Amazon’s Agentic AI Play
We are in an era of agentic AI, where digital assistants are evolving beyond being passive chatbots to become proactive agents that can execute automated tasks, use logical reasoning to make decisions, and interact seamlessly with websites and other digital interfaces. While we are still in the early stages of its development, the arrival of Alexa+ further signifies this emerging paradigm shift, which will redefine consumer engagement and create new opportunities for brands.
Compared to its former self, Alexa+ comes with major upgrades in conversational fluency, contextual memory, and task automation, thanks to an agnostic approach of integrating AI models and picking what’s best for the task. Using Amazon Bedrock, an AWS service for accessing foundational AI models, it taps into models from Anthropic and Amazon Nova to enhance its capabilities. Unlike earlier versions that relied on rigid command structures — something that Panay acknowledged as frustrating for users on stage — Alexa+ now understands natural speech and user preferences.
More importantly, as an aspiring AI agent, Alexa+ also has an expanded set of features, capable of handling reservations, ordering concert tickets, scheduling transportation, and managing household logistics. Additionally, its improved discovery and transaction capabilities leverage API-driven agentic features, allowing Alexa+ to navigate brand websites and complete purchases on behalf of users, streamlining the customer journey.
For instance, users can ask, ‘What’s a good restaurant nearby that takes reservations and has live music tonight?’ and Alexa+ will not only recommend a suitable option but also book the reservation, confirm availability, automatically add it to the user’s calendar, and even notify friends or family who might be joining — all without requiring step-by-step instructions. Answers are informed by what’s in Alexa’s “memory” and preferences that Alexa has noted over time.
In short, as Amazon summed it up in its keynote, the revamped Alexa is smarter, conversational, personalized, and “gets things done.” For brands, this opens new possibilities for creating highly personalized, AI-driven experiences that fit seamlessly into consumers’ daily routines.
What Alexa+ Mean for the AI Competitive Landscape
As previously mentioned, Amazon’s biggest at-home advantage is the prevalence of its smart home devices, including its Echo line of smart speakers and displays, Fire TV devices, and third-party gadgets that are Alexa-compatible. According to a recent CNET survey, half of US adults (50%) have used a home voice assistant this year (since Jan. 1), and Alexa is the most popular option with 27% of the household share. This market share is in line with the results of a Consumer Insights survey conducted in late 2024, which found that Amazon Echo leads the U.S. smart speaker market with a 61% market share.
People used Alexa 20% more in 2024 than they did in 2023, Panay pointed out shortly after the event started. However, despite its popularity with users, Alexa was falling behind competitors in terms of its intelligence level and AI capabilities, especially as Google, second in U.S. smart speaker market share, aggressively pushed Gemini to replace Google Assistant on Google Home and some Nest speakers. In this context, the arrival of Alexa+ — despite its reported delays — is Amazon’s strategic response to defend its leadership in the smart home category. With the smart home ecosystem becoming a key battleground for AI deployment, Amazon needs to ensure that Alexa is keeping up with the competition in the agentic AI era.
Therefore, it makes sense that Alexa+ is being positioned as an ecosystem play for Amazon in terms of its pricing and availability. Amazon revealed towards the end of the event that Alexa+ will be available for $19.99 per month, but is free for all Prime members. This move signals a push to make AI-driven convenience a premium feature within the broader Amazon ecosystem.
Brands should consider how this shift in consumer expectations — paying for a smarter assistant — might influence their engagement strategies. With Prime members automatically gaining access, businesses integrated with Alexa+ can tap into a ready-made audience primed for high-touch, AI-driven interactions.
It’s worth noting that beyond four select Echo Show devices starting next month, Alexa+ will also be available via Alexa.com and a new dedicated mobile app. There’s a visual component as well. Alexa+ powers photo galleries and other personalized content on Echo Show displays. A new “For You” panel will display timely news updates based on a user’s interests, and smart home controls.
For Alexa+ to provide a truly personalized AI experience, it will require significantly more data about users’ daily lives — data that Amazon currently lacks access to. Sure, Amazon knows what you purchased on Amazon.com, what you watched on Prime Video, and what your Ring doorbell recorded. However, it does not have the same level of insight into users’ personal activities that smartphones provide. Unlike system-level AI assistants such as Google Gemini or Apple’s Siri, which can passively learn from users’ behaviors across various apps and services, Amazon lacks this kind of operating system-level integration some of its competitors enjoy. So instead, Alexa+ depends on users actively sharing their preferences and routines to personalize and contextualize its responses.
This reliance on user-provided information means Alexa+ can only reach its full potential as an AI agent if users continually input relevant details — such as calendar updates, recent emails, or personal reminders. For example, instead of passively detecting schedule changes, Alexa+ requires users to manually share updates, like a rescheduled soccer practice or a last-minute change to a dinner reservation. In this context, Amazon’s decision to launch a dedicated Alexa+ app may be a strategic move to increase its mobile presence, offering users a more seamless way to input and manage data for a richer AI-driven experience.
Overall, the success of Alexa+ will depend on whether it can truly deliver on its agentic capabilities. While Amazon demonstrated Alexa+ booking an UberX to pick up someone from the JFK airport, the real-world logistic intricacies of airport pickups — at JFK you’d have to go to the right pickup zone for your terminal, which could be an AirTrain ride away for certain terminals — suggest that further refinements might still be needed in some use cases. But in the domains that Amazon already excels in, such as ecommerce and OTT streaming, Alexa+ has a clearer path to demonstrating its value to the 180 million Prime subscribers who are already deeply integrated into Amazon’s ecosystem.
Key Considerations for Brand Marketers
Alexa+ could represent a significant shift in how brands engage consumers in their homes. This evolution in AI-driven interactions means that brands will need to adapt to new ways to interact with customers at home through natural, conversational engagement. For example, Amazon demoed Alexa+ ordering groceries, a feature it has previously offered. However, with Alexa+, the scope of grocery ordering appears to be expanding beyond Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh, potentially incorporating additional national grocery chains and regional retailers.
Instead of relying on traditional search-based ecommerce, brands can leverage Alexa+ to suggest products based on user history, preferences, and even real-time needs. This ability to facilitate dynamic, personalized transactions makes AI-driven voice commerce a key growth area for businesses seeking deeper integration into consumers’ daily lives.
Beyond retail, Alexa+ may also be leveraged by brands in other verticals as well. For example, it could enhance entertainment content discovery by integrating with Prime Video and Fire TV to facilitate AI-powered media navigation and interactive advertising. New kids-friendly features like Explore and Stories with Alexa+ could offer brands in the edutainment and toy sectors opportunities to create AI-generated storytelling and interactive learning experiences. Meanwhile, hospitality and service brands might explore voice-activated services, allowing users to book reservations, coordinate babysitters, or arrange transportation more seamlessly.
For advertisers and marketers, Alexa+ presents possible new opportunities: optimizing for AI-driven voice search, ensuring frictionless commerce experiences, leveraging hyper-personalization, and exploring emerging advertising channels such as branded AI content. Early adopters could gain an advantage as AI assistants become a more integrated part of consumers’ daily lives.
