Amazon makes Alexa+ AI assistant available to everyone in the U.S.

Amazon on wednesday announced is making Alexa+ available to everyone in the US, almost a year after launching a revamped version of its digital assistant.

Alexa+ has been in “early access” preview since last March; This means consumers will have to join a waitlist or purchase newer devices to use the productive AI-powered voice assistant.

Amazon pitched the service as a souped-up version of the 11-year-old Alexa that can handle multiple queries at once and serve as an “agent” that performs actions on your behalf, like booking a repair shop or an Uber ride.

Starting Wednesday, Amazon will begin charging users $19.99 per month for access to Alexa+. The service remains free for Prime subscribers, who pay $139 a year for the membership, and is free for anyone who tries it through the Alexa+ website and app.

Access to the free Alexa+ experience will be “limited based on usage,” Amazon said.

Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Echo, said in an interview that tens of millions of consumers use Alexa+. Rausch said users’ interaction with Alexa has increased “basically across every dimension” and that people are having two to three times more conversations with the service than they did before.

“Engagement increases every week in the customer journey, and that’s actually the sign of a successful product,” Rausch said. “There are a lot of consumer electronics products where it goes up and comes back down again.”

In the past weeks, Amazon started upgrade automatically Some Prime members have switched to the new Alexa+, disappointing some users who prefer to keep the classic Alexa service. Users can roll back the update via voice command.

Rausch said Alexa+ users are sticking with the service as they “learn and discover more of what it can do.”

Amazon is overhauling Alexa in response to the rise of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude.

The original Alexa, released in 2014, wowed users by allowing them to chat with a digital assistant using their voice and get instant responses from it. Users primarily interacted with Alexa through Amazon’s Echo smart speaker.

Amazon highlighted a website and application with Alexa+. Most users interact with chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini via text or voice through their web browser or smartphone apps.