Amazon says that Alexa+, the brand new and improved Alexa unveiled on Wednesday, is powered by a “mannequin agnostic” system that all the time makes use of the “finest” AI mannequin for a given activity.
On stage at a New York Metropolis press occasion, Amazon VP Daniel Rausch defined that Alexa+ attracts on Bedrock — the corporate’s cloud platform designed to let organizations experiment with generative AI fashions — to energy its numerous capabilities.
Among the many fashions Alexa+ makes use of are Nova, Amazon’s in-house generative AI mannequin household, in addition to models from close partner and collaborator, Anthropic.
Claude will assist energy Amazon’s next-generation AI assistant, Alexa+.
Amazon and Anthropic have labored carefully collectively over the previous 12 months, with @mikeyk main a crew that helped Amazon get the complete advantages of Claude’s capabilities. pic.twitter.com/yI0abtnZke
— Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) February 26, 2025
“[W]e constructed a complicated [model] routing system [to match] every buyer request with the very best mannequin for the duty at hand, balancing all the necessities of a crisp, conversational expertise,” Amazon explained in a blog post.
This “mannequin agnostic” strategy permits what is likely to be thought-about “agentic” capabilities. Alexa+ leverages a brand new system known as “consultants” for specific duties, Amazon says. Consultants orchestrate and execute Amazon providers in addition to these from third events, like AI startup Suno’s music-generating instruments.
Rausch mentioned on day one, Alexa+ will work with “tens of hundreds” of units and providers.
A few of these embrace information providers. Amazon says that it’s partnered with publications together with Time, Reuters, and the Related Press to produce information for solutions associated to present occasions, monetary market actions, and extra.
That solely scratches the floor of what Alexa+ can do. In accordance with Rausch, Alexa+ can navigate web sites to finish duties on a person’s behalf. For instance, it could possibly discover a skilled to restore a damaged oven by looking out the online, and even contact the restore store straight.
“Alexa takes a few minutes to navigate a web site [and it] comes again and tells me it’s carried out,” Rausch mentioned on stage. “I’m going to get a notification on my cellphone that lets me know [when Alexa is finished.]”
Consultants additionally permit Alexa+ to coordinate a number of providers directly, Rausch mentioned. For instance, making a dinner reservation by way of OpenTable, then reserving an Uber to the restaurant and texting the plans to a contact. Builders will be capable to faucet into this performance by way of Alexa AI Multi-Agent SDK, which is launching quickly in preview.