The biggest surprise at Amazon’s press conference last week was the lack of hardware announcements. Traditionally, Amazon announces dozens of new gadgets at its events, but this time, Amazon spent 70 minutes talking about software. Specifically, Alexa Plus, its new generative AI-powered Alexa voice assistant. And that was exactly the right move.

Giving Alexa the power of generative AI was already expected to be the star announcement from Amazon -- and it was. During the last Devices and Services event in 2023, Amazon announced a gen AI-powered 'Alexa+' or Alexa Plus and a new user interface coming to an Echo device near you, and the company is now making it more real than ever before.

Amazon is aiming to catch up in generative artificial intelligence and to reboot its virtual assistant, which has been leapfrogged by powerful chatbots.

Amazon announced the revamped Alexa+ voice assistant, with “more personalized and conversational” generative-artificial-intelligence features, at a live event Wednesday. It starts rolling out to Echo devices with display next month,

Amazon’s just revealed Alexa+, the new version of the Alexa assistant, but it won’t have all of its cool powers on every Amazon device.

Following years of development, Amazon's next-generation digital assistant is ready for public use. Panos Panay, Amazon's senior vice president of devices and services, demoed Alexa+ at the company's 2025 devices event.

Anthropic’s Claude large language model is powering the majority of complex tasks for Amazon’s new Alexa , sources tell CNBC.