In the near future you'll see lots of these weird Alexa things standing around your house!
That's because Amazon just presented its latest crime against privacy.
Meet the all-new Alexa+ that wants you to have:
- Details Handled
- Life Sorted, and
- To-dos Done
It's not all bad news though. If we ignore that they collect and sell all your private data, then in a nutshell Alexa+ is the generative AI version of your barely functional regular Alexa, that, if all goes well, will reduce some friction in your daily life.
Alexa+ comes with some “new” abilities.
- You can ask it to order groceries for you. Just like before, but now with AI.
- You can send event invites to your friends. Just like before, but now with AI.
- You can save personal information about you. Just like before, but now with AI.
You get the point.
Alexa+ is $19.99 per month, while Amazon Prime is $14.99 per month with free Alexa+ access; hardest decision of my life…
Alexa+ comes with access to the Alexa app & Alexa website; Yet both applications are not available in the location associated with my regular german Amazon Prime account and therefore useless benefits.
Alexa+ will work on “almost every” Alexa device, starting with the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21.
Alexa+:
- Can reference smart home cameras,
- Read a study guide and test you on the answers, and
- Connect to services like Uber Eats, Sonos, Zoom, Xbox, Dyson, and Ticketmaster.
Speaking of tickets. Your best buddy reporting to the government can also find and buy concert tickets for you, powered by models Amazon calls “experts.”
Well, I haven’t forgotten about the automatic Amazon Fresh observance which turned out to be executed by human “experts” so this technology does not get my trust.
My actual favorite feature is the natural language processing and reasoning that comes with AI. That means you no longer need to remember all these Harry Potter spells and say them out loud like a poem you had to memorize for that one class where you hated the teacher and she hated you… but this video should not be about my child trauma, let’s rather focus on some cool new visual features. The dashboard and UI on touchscreen Echo devices have had a facelift and now finally look like their design aesthetic has arrived in this century.
So yeah, Alexa and the team behind it made some right moves in the right directions. It is no longer a very expensive timer, but got promoted to your digital 24/7 personal assistant. And that this AI assistance comes with a cost in data and privacy should be clear from the get go!
Top comments (0)