‘Alright mate?’: Amazon pins UK hopes on AI upgrade of Alexa

“Commiserations, mate, Chelsea lost 3-0 in the Champions League last night against Paris Saint-Germain,” says Alexa as it attempts to break the news gently to an awaiting Blues fan. Such is the injection of personality and understanding that Amazon hopes will lead to Britons re-engaging with their millions of Alexa devices, restoring it to the cutting edge of voice assistants rather than resigned to being a glorified egg timer.After its early access launch last year in the US, the long-awaited generative AI upgrade Alexa+ is finally making its debut in the UK, supporting eight years of existing devices strewn through more than half of UK households. With the UK being Amazon’s most engaged market and more than 40 accents to contend with across the UK and Ireland, the “next-generation ambient AI assistant” has its work cut out for it.The service will be available immediately for new purchases of Amazon’s latest generation of Echo and Show devices, with an invite system in operation for existing devices, which Amazon’s head of Alexa and Echo, Daniel Rausch, insists will progress faster than it did in the US.“We’ve eliminated the need for that Alexa-speak, such as ‘turn on bedroom lamp two’, you can just speak naturally,” Rausch said. “Alexa+ knows you, your home, your family. And is available anywhere, any time, as life does not happen in a chat box.”Much of the experience has been built in Amazon’s AI labs in the UK in Cambridge, but in limited demos Alexa+ butchered the pronunciation of player names and used “zero” instead of “nil” for football scores. Amazon still has work do to.Alexa+ can manage calendars, control smart home devices and perform proactive routines. Photograph: AmazonThe upgrade is free during its “early access” period, but it remains to be seen whether users will subsequently be willing to fork out £19.99 a month for Alexa+ or take up an Amazon-prime" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="28732" data-entity-type="organization">Amazon Prime subscription into which it is bundled. Its reception in the US, where it has been widely available since February, has been mixed, with critics complaining of inconsistency and fabrication – two issues that have dogged genAI since its inception.Despite this, Rausch says engagement with Alexa+ has increased month on month, including a 25% increase in music listening and a 50% increase in smart home control, due to the reduced friction and vastly expanded capability. Amazon promises Alexa+ can perform complex multi-stage actions, such as turning off the lights, turning down the thermostat, locking the doors and putting the alarm on all in one command.It also promises to be able to remember your likes and dislikes, the teams or players you support, the movies you like and the music you love, and to be able to do that for different members of your family. But Amazon is also stepping into the world of agentic AI using links with partner services to perform real-world actions on your behalf, such as ordering a takeaway, booking a restaurant in a free slot on your calendar or remembering your mother’s birthday and buying her a present – from Amazon, of course.Whether that’s enough to revitalise smart speaker sales that have reportedly fallen off a cliff in the UK and stem job losses remains to be seen.Injecting something as powerful as genAI into the ambient environment of millions of homes where any member of the family, including kids whom Alexa+ is much better at understanding, can interact with it also carries great risk. But unlike some competitors, Rausch says Amazon is ready.“With years of experience of building consumer AI products we know you have to intentionally build guard rails into a product from the beginning, so that it doesn’t answer problematic questions. Someone is trying to break it every day. It’s not something we crow about, but that’s why we have the Responsible AI team. That’s their entire job.”