Amazon’s Alexa+ Aims to Tackle Brazil’s Many Languages

Amazon says its Alexa+ voice assistant is now available to customers in Brazil.

It’s part of an ongoing rollout of the upgraded Alexa that began earlier this year, and is scheduled to continue into 2027, Amazon announced Thursday (June 18).

“Powered by generative AI, the new Alexa+ represents a meaningful leap forward from the original Alexa—it’s smarter, more conversational, deeply personalized, can get things done on your behalf, and understands local Brazilian culture,” the announcement said.

It also understands Brazil’s multiple languages, Amazon continued, with the company working with engineers, linguists, speech scientists and local product teams to develop “advanced artificial intelligence” (AI) techniques to interpret what users are saying.

“Brazil’s linguistic diversity is extraordinary—from the gaúcho accent to the carioca, from the nordestino to the mineiro, each region has its own unique way of speaking,” the announcement said. “Alexa+ understands not just what you say, but how you say it—regardless of your accent, the regional expressions you use, or your particular way of speaking.”

Tailored to the needs of Brazilian customers, Alexa+ can have conversations about the topics that matter and connect to the services and devices they use every day.

“Alexa+ knows what ‘saudade’ means, understands what you’re saying when you tell it you’re ‘de boa,’ and knows that ‘táosso’ means things are tough,” the company added. “It might even drop a ‘beleza, resolvido’ or ‘podedeixar’ into the conversation.”

Alexa+ is available now in Brazil in an early access program, with new customers expected to get invites each week. Access will gradually expand in the months to come, Amazon said.

The new version of Alexa was rolled out earlier this year nearly a year after a trial introduction. As PYMNTS wrote at the time, it “marks Amazon’s most significant update to Alexa since its introduction and reflects pressure to keep pace with rapidly improving assistants tied to smartphones, operating systems and productivity tools.”

More recently, Amazon said it would mothball its standalone Rufus AI shopping chatbot and replace it with Alexa for Shopping, a new agentic AI tool for U.S. customers.

“The decision skips past the chatbot moment many in retail anticipated: the gradual migration from keyword search to conversational commerce, eventually giving way to agentic, autonomous in-browser shopping,” PYMNTS wrote in May.

“It suggests a bolder thesis: rather than treating AI as a layer on top of eCommerce search, Amazon is betting that voice can become the operating system for shopping itself.”