I owned a lot of Alexa-powered devices in my former home: There were Amazon Echos in most rooms, including an older Echo Plus in the living room, a smattering of Dots, a Spot in a bedroom, and an Echo Show in the kitchen. A Fire TV ran in the bedroom. And, in a drawer, a […]
First impressions of Alexa+, Amazon’s upgraded, AI-powered digital assistant Read More »
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sees an opportunity to deliver ads to users during their conversations with the company’s AI-powered digital assistant, Alexa+, he said during Amazon’s second-quarter earnings call Thursday. “People are excited about the devices that they can buy from us that has Alexa+ enabled in it. People do a lot of shopping [with
Amazon CEO wants to put ads in your Alexa+ conversations Read More »
More invites to Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant, Alexa+, powered by generative AI, have been steadily rolling out. The service, first announced in February, now reaches over a million users, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. However, Alexa+ is not yet publicly available. Instead, Amazon has been working through its waitlist, sending out invites to those
Over a million people now have access to the gen-AI powered Alexa+ Read More »
Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant powered by generative AI, Alexa+, has rolled out to over 100,000 users, CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s earnings call Thursday. While that’s a far cry from the 600 million Alexa devices out there, the company is making some progress on the rollout of Alexa+, which was first unveiled in
Amazon CEO says 100,000 users now have Alexa+ Read More »
Amazon has delivered on its promise to launch an upgraded Alexa experience, Alexa+, by the end of March. But the service reportedly lacks many of the features Amazon demoed at a press event in late February. Alexa+ can’t yet perform certain “agentic” AI tasks showcased in the company’s marketing, like ordering takeout on Grubhub or
Some Alexa+ features reportedly won’t arrive for months Read More »
Amazon on Monday unveiled Nova Act, a general-purpose AI agent that can take control of a web browser and independently perform some simple actions. Alongside the new agentic AI model, Amazon is releasing the Nova Act SDK, a toolkit that allows developers to build agent prototypes with Nova Act. Nova Act, developed by Amazon’s recently
Amazon unveils Nova Act, an AI agent that can control a web browser Read More »
Amazon started the Alexa Fund in 2015 to back early-stage voice startups. With the advent of large language models and Amazon launching Gen AI-powered Alexa+ along with a family of multimodal AI models, the fund now wants to broaden its scope and invest more in AI startups. In a blog post Amazon shared with TechCrunch
Amazon’s Alexa Fund is now backing AI startups Read More »
Amazon Echo users will no longer have the option to process their Alexa requests locally, which means all of their voice recordings will be sent to the company’s cloud. Ars Technica reports that on Friday, Amazon sent an email to customers who have “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” enabled on their Echo smart speakers and
Amazon’s Echo will send all voice recordings to the cloud, starting March 28 Read More »
Optifye.ai, a Y Combinator-backed startup, sparked massive social media backlash this week after its demo went viral. The video, which shows how the company’s AI-powered cameras track factory workers in real-time, quickly caught fire online, with criticism flooding in on X and Hacker News. In the clip, a supervisor calls out an underperforming worker, sparking
Every year, it seems like there’s at least one big YC controversy Read More »
Amazon shared an impressive vision of an “agentic” future on Wednesday — one in which the company’s improved Alexa, Alexa+, handles countless mundane tasks, from booking restaurants to finding appliance repairmen. If Amazon can deliver, it could be the first out to the gate with a comprehensive, consumer-focused agent tool. The company hopes to marry
With Alexa+, Amazon makes an intriguing play in the consumer agent space Read More »
