Alexa+ has landed on UK soil, and while customers wait with anticipation to try the AI-powered virtual assistant, it's a great opportunity to look back.
Since the service launched in the US last spring, it's already seen some big changes as customers navigate a new world of assistive smarts and agentic AI. Now, with the service coming to the UK, there's also been a lot of naturalization work to help Alexa+ navigate our regional accents, idioms, and culture — right the way down to understanding some of our favorite snacks.
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Rausch says the early results have been quite something behind the scenes. "Engagement with Alexa+ is up two to three times over the original Alexa," he explains, calmly confident as he discusses the road till now. "Even things I didn't think could grow, like music, which goes up 25% in terms of streaming time when a customer turns on Alexa+.
"It's just more delightful... It's not like customers have 25% more time!" he adds, though he was keen to highlight that the overall increase of engagement owes a lot to some of the exciting new features facilitated by a smarter, faster Alexa. "In the US, I'll use it to book rideshare, or we'll book a table for lunch together. The whole thing is what is elevating that engagement level."
Of course, it's never all roses, and certainly not with an Early Access programme. Still, Rausch takes a positive view of these learnings. "I've never shipped a product this easy to report a bug," he jokes, reflecting on what I can only imagine was a hectic first year of service. "You can just say to Alexa what feedback you have, and that helps us to learn there's an edge to sand somewhere."
One example of note was the new Alexa+ voice and cadence. "Some customers — it's a minority of them — they don't like the new voices," says Rausch. So now, Amazon offers a wider range of voices, and when Alexa+ introduces herself, she offers you the chance to change her settings.
Naturally, concerns may remain around always-on devices when it comes to privacy and security, but with 10 years of service in the UK under their belt in addition to their years of US coverage, Rausch seems confident in Amazon's approach. "Customers have the same degree of transparency and control [with Alexa+]... it turns out, if you build products with transparency and control, you also generally speaking meet every regulation and legal requirement."
Customers who already know their way around Alexa's Privacy Hub will be glad to know that the service, with all its features, remains the same for Alexa+. "You can see everything Alexa heard, you can delete things... you can control all of your data settings around training. Everything's in the same place, and it applies to the Alexa service as a whole."
While all US Prime customers with compatible devices can now register for Alexa+ (or pay a standalone subscription of $19.99), for now, the free beta programme in the UK is limited to the Amazon Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11, Echo Dot Max, and Echo Studio. If you've already got one at home, you can sign up for an Early Access invite now.
It'll probably take about the same amount of time for Alexa+ to fully launch in the UK as it did in the US — so about a year. In that time, we'll see the service come to a wide range of Alexa-enabled devices, including your Fire TV, and it will soon be available in a web browser at alexa.co.uk.
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