Amazon’s Alexa+ Voice Assistant Draws 100,000 Users as Rollout Continues

Amazon has rolled out Alexa+, the new version of its voice assistant, to more than 100,000 users so far, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Thursday (May 1) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Alexa+ will be made available to more users in the coming months, Jassy said. It is now starting to roll out in the U.S. and will be expanded to other countries later this year.

The new version of the voice assistant is being made available on an Early Access basis, beginning with customers who sign up to be notified and own an Echo Show 8, 10, 15 or 21 and then expanding to more Echo customers over time, according to the Amazon website.

“People are really liking Alexa+ thus far,” Jassy said during the call.

The new voice assistant is free to Prime members and available for $19.99 per month to non-members, Jassy said.

He added that Amazon has more than half a billion devices in people’s homes, offices and cars to which Alexa+ will be able to be delivered.

Jassy said during that call that the new version is “meaningfully smarter and more capable than its prior self, can both answer virtually any questions and take actions.”

He added that users no longer have to say “Alexa” before requesting every action; instead, they only have to say it once and can then have an ongoing conversation with the voice assistant.

“And then I think it’s just experience in trying thing,” Jassy said during the call. “So, you can do things like: you have guests coming over on a Saturday night for dinner and you can say, ‘Alexa, please open the shades, put the lights on in the driveway and on the porch, increase the temperature five degrees and pick music that would be great for dinner that’s mellow, and she just does it. When you have those types of experiences, it makes you want to do more of it.”

When Amazon introduced Alexa+ in February, the company said the new voice assistant would start rolling out in the next few weeks in the U.S. and works with nearly all existing Alexa devices.

Alexa+ had been plagued by delays, reportedly due to it hallucinating or giving wrong information on test questions. The unveiling came about a year and a half after Amazon first announced it was going to infuse AI into Alexa following the release of ChatGPT.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “How Consumers Want to Live in the Voice Economy” found that 54% of consumers said they would prefer voice technology in the future because it is faster than typing or using a touchscreen.