Over 10 years after shelving the Fire Phone, Amazon is reportedly planning to launch another smartphone, this time focused on Alexa. According to Reuters, the phone, which is code-named “Transformer,” will center around Amazon’s AI assistant, but Alexa won’t “necessarily be the primary operating system of the phone.” “Transformer” is currently in development in Amazon’s […]
OpenAI has closed another round of funding, totalling $110 billion being newly committed to the maker of ChatGPT, which it says has more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million consumer subscribers. Amazon is investing $50 billion and striking a deal that includes plans for custom models and more. Nvidia and SoftBank […]
After less than two years at Amazon, David Luan, the head of Amazon’s San Francisco AI lab, is departing the company. Luan announced the update in a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, saying, “I’ll be leaving Amazon at the end of this week to cook up something new.” He added that, “There’s incredible work to […]
Amazon is giving you more control over how Alexa behaves during conversations and responses. Three “personality style” presets are launching today for Alexa Plus users in the US that allow you to make the AI-powered voice assistant more concise, cheerful, or relaxed, depending on your personal preferences. “Alexa’s personality is one of the things customers […]
Amazon’s rolling out a new “Send to Alexa Plus” feature to the latest Kindle Scribe and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft owners starting February 12. The feature lets you send your notes or documents to Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa Plus assistant, which can then summarize them, turn them into to-do lists, calendar events, or reminders, as well as […]
I’ve used Alexa to manage my shopping list for years. There are plenty of great list apps out there, but the convenience of adding items by voice anywhere in my house, pulling up the list on an Echo Show in the kitchen, and having it on my phone via the Alexa app has worked well […]
Amazon has announced that its generative AI-powered digital assistant Alexa Plus is now available to all Prime members in the US via any Alexa-enabled device, Alexa.com, and the Alexa mobile app. If you don’t have Prime, you can access the assistant on a new free tier on the web and app, or pay $20 a […]
If you’re looking for a versatile gift for Valentine’s Day that can be sentimental and practical, Amazon’s fourth-generation Echo Show 8 can serve as both a digital photo frame and a smart home controller. And right now, it’s on sale at Amazon for $149.99 ($30 off) — a new low price — as part of […]
Over the past couple of weeks, users on the r/alexa subreddit have reported getting automatically upgraded to Alexa Plus as a perk for their Prime memberships. The update doesn’t appear to be opt-in, but there’s an option to roll it back. Screenshots of a message from Amazon sent to users state that, “After your device […]
At CES this week, Bosch announced the launch of its Personal AI Barista, Powered by Alexa Plus, and teased a new AI-powered cooking feature coming to its connected appliances. Coming to its Bosch 800 Series fully automatic espresso machines, the upgrade allows Alexa users to talk with the machine via an Echo smart speaker “as […]