Alexa

Over a million people now have access to the gen-AI powered Alexa+

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 […]

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Amazon unveils Nova Act, an AI agent that can control a web browser

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

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Amazon’s Echo will send all voice recordings to the cloud, starting March 28

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

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Every year, it seems like there’s at least one big YC controversy

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

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With Alexa+, Amazon makes an intriguing play in the consumer agent space

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

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Alexa+ can read, summarize and recall lengthy documents

At Amazon’s annual Devices & Services event on Wednesday, the company introduced Alexa+, an enhanced version of its voice assistant, now powered by generative AI.  During the demonstration, Amazon showcased how users can share documents with Alexa+, allowing it to recall important details and answer questions about those documents. Mara Segal, director of Alexa, provided

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