After more than a year's wait, Amazon finally unveiled Alexa Plus, its new and improved voice assistant that uses AI to enable more complex interactions and let you do more than just set egg timers and play music.
Alexa Plus will cost $19.99 per month (but it will be free for Prime members) and will roll out to the Echo Show 8, Echo Show 10, Echo Show 15, and Echo Show 21 in a few short weeks.
Check out our recap of the Amazon Devices event. I was at the event, and after seeing a few demos of Alexa Plus up close, here are the five things I can't wait to try myself.
A smarter smart home
The Echo Show devices have made it easier to control smart home devices and to get a live look in at security cameras and video doorbells.
But there's still some major pain points around setting up smart home routines and performing basic tasks, especially if you have family members who aren't as comfortable using a smart assistant.
One of the neatest things I saw was that Alexa Plus was able to make inferences around the names of smart home devices — potentially eliminating the frustration when you ask it to turn off a light, but getting a response like "there are several devices with that name."
Now, for example, if you've named one of your lights "sofa light," you can tell Alexa to "turn off the light by the seating," and it will assume you're talking about the sofa light.
Another demo showed how Alexa can tie in with the best home security cameras, in this case Ring, which is owned by Amazon.
If you're subscribed to Ring's premium plan (which has AI-enabled smart video search), you can ask Alexa to show you, say, videos of children playing in the snow on your driveway. Or, if you've told Alexa your dog's name and its breed, you can ask it to show you videos of when someone took it for a walk.
What could really be helpful, though, is how you can use natural language to create a routine. In one demo, an Amazon representative said "I want to create a new workout routine to help me make sure I really get to my workout every morning."
Alexa responded "I've created a new morning workout routine for you. Here's what it does: Every weekday at 6 am, I'll announce 'Time for your morning workout! Let's get moving!' on all your devices. Then, I'll play an upbeat workout playlist on your Echo Show 21 for an hour. Finally, I'll start a 30-minute workout timer. This should help you stay on track with your fitness goal."
The rep then showed how he could modify the routine so that Alexa wouldn't start it until a motion sensor picked up his movement, and to have the playlist play on another Echo device.
Better time management
One of the more interesting — and potentially unsettling — features of Alexa Plus is its ability to analyze a document and generate suggestions, such as adding things to your calendar, setting reminders, and generally acting as a virtual assistant.
For example, you could scan in a copy of your kid's after-school activities or baseball games, and all would be added to your calendar, so you don't forget to pick them up. You'll be able to do this via the Alexa app, a web browser, or by sending an email to Alexa.
A demo I saw was for someone's tennis practices, which included a code they needed to access the courts; the Amazon representative told Alexa to send him a reminder with the code right before each practice.
That's really handy, but I would be concerned with giving Alexa access to any other potentially sensitive information.
"We centralize important information such as your interactions with Alexa+ and various settings into the Alexa Privacy dashboard," writes Amazon on its blog. "Built on the secure infrastructure of AWS, Alexa+ brings world-class privacy and security protection to your everyday interactions."
Those who upload documents to Alexa will also be able to delete them, much in the same way you can currently delete your interactions with Alexa.
Alexa Plus could save you money
No one likes to pay more for things, but knowing when something drops in price can be hard to find. Using Alexa Plus, you can search for things like tickets to sports or entertainment events, and set up a notification for when prices drop.
While I've rarely seen ticket prices drop — good luck with Taylor Swift concerts — but it's nice to dream.
You can also use Alexa Plus to monitor items on Amazon and let you know when they go on sale. You can even set Alexa to automatically order those products for you.
I'll be really curious to see if this works with Amazon Fresh: "Alexa, notify me when the price of eggs drops below $8."
Integration with third-party apps
At several demo areas, Amazon representatives showed how Alexa Plus works with third-party apps such as Uber, OpenTable, TicketMaster, and Grubhub to make it easier to call for a call, get food, reservations, and more.
While it doesn't look like Alexa will call a restaurant on your behalf to make a reservation, as Google Assistant does, it can use an app like OpenTable to book a seat for you.
Amazon also showed how you could easily modify your reservation via Alexa Plus by saying something like "oh, we now have three people, and we need to move the reservation to 7 p.m."
When ordering an Uber ride, the Echo Show displayed several car options, which you could select with a tap.
If you were ordering the ride for someone elsou could then tell Alexa to send them a message letting them know their car was on the way.
Alexa Plus for kids
I think a real test of Alexa Plus' imagination will be with one of its kid-focused features, called Stories with Alexa.
All you have to do is to ask Alexa to create a story, and then you tell it what kind of story you'd like, what sort of creatures or people should be in the story, and so forth — it's sort of like mad libs. The stories will have narrators, sound effects, and visual elements, too.
I'm really curious to see how creative Alexa Plus will be with its stories, and how interactive it will be for children.
This feature will also require an Amazon Kids+ subscription, which is $5.99 per month for Amazon Prime members and $7.99 per month for non-Prime members.
Outlook
There was a lot to unpack at Amazon's Devices - er, Alexa Plus event. As Alexa Plus rolls out, there will undoubtedly be a lot of new features and things to try, so we're looking forward to testing everything it has to offer.
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