Amazon on Wednesday unveiled the first major overhaul of its Alexa voice assistant since its introduction more than a decade ago, embedding it with generative artificial intelligence.

Amazon focused heavily on agentic AI features for Alexa+, including the ability to draft and send text messages and emails to contacts. This is not especially new or revolutionary given the recent agentic AI explosion in the tech world, but it's still worth talking about.

Alexa Plus will start rolling out next month in early access. It's an opt-in service and won't be available to everyone through an over-the-air update in March.

Alexa+, Amazon’s revamped version of Alexa was unveiled Wednesday, bringing the popular voice assistant into the artificial intelligence era.

The popular voice assistant was created to have more personality, can check a user’s tone and even plan romantic dates.

Amazon introduces Alexa+, a generative AI-powered assistant with a monthly fee of $19.99, free for Prime members.

A software example comes with ChatGPT Advanced Voice, which, like Amazon's Alexa, can hold conversational, multi-turn chats with people. However, it is only available in ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 monthly. Thus, users must go out of their way to access ChatGPT and commit to an additional subscription.

I don't want to overstate things but, between us, Alexa+ may be the Alexa you've been waiting for. Amazon unveiled its massive digital assistant overhaul, which makes the platform smarter, more conversational,