Amazon’s AI-powered transformation of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is expanding its reach to the web. During the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday, the company announced the official debut of Alexa.com, a new website currently rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access users. This platform will enable customers to utilize Alexa+ online, akin to interacting with other AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini.
While Alexa-enabled devices, including Amazon’s Echo smart speakers and displays, have achieved significant market penetration with over 600 million units sold globally, Amazon believes that for its AI assistant to remain competitive, it must be universally accessible — not just within the home, but also on mobile devices and the internet.
Furthermore, this expansion could eventually allow anyone to engage with Alexa+, even if they do not possess a device in their home.
In conjunction with this expansion, Amazon is updating its Alexa mobile application to deliver a more “agent-forward” experience. This means the app’s homepage will now feature a chatbot-style interface, making it resemble a typical AI chatbot more closely. (While chat functionality existed previously in the app, the primary focus has now shifted to conversational interaction, with other features taking a secondary role.)
On the Alexa.com website, users can utilize Alexa+ for various common tasks, such as exploring complex topics, generating content, and creating travel itineraries. However, Amazon aims to distinguish its assistant by concentrating on the needs of families within the home. This includes controlling smart devices, a capability already present in the original Alexa, but also extends to actions like updating family calendars or to-do lists, making dinner reservations, adding grocery items to Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods carts, discovering and saving recipes to a library, or even planning family movie nights with personalized recommendations.
Recently, Amazon has been integrating more services with Alexa+, including the addition of Angi, Expedia, Square, and Yelp, which will join existing applications like Fodor’s, OpenTable, Suno, Ticketmaster, Thumbtack, and Uber.
The Alexa.com website incorporates a navigation sidebar for quick access to frequently used Alexa features, enabling users to effortlessly resume tasks such as setting the thermostat, checking calendar appointments, reviewing shopping lists, and more.
Additionally, Amazon seeks to persuade customers to share their personal documents, emails, and calendar access with Alexa+. This would allow its AI to serve as a central hub for managing household affairs, from children’s school holidays and soccer schedules to doctor’s appointments and other essential family reminders — such as a pet’s last rabies shot date or the timing of a neighbor’s backyard barbecue.
This represents a challenging area for Amazon, as it lacks its own productivity suite or the extensive personal data that competitors like Google already possess for their customers. Instead, Amazon has relied on tools for forwarding and uploading files to Alexa+ for its AI to track. This functionality will now also be available on Alexa.com, and shared information can be displayed and managed on an Echo Show’s screen.
If executed successfully, this capability to manage a family’s personal data could become Alexa’s most significant selling point.
“Seventy-six percent of what customers are using Alexa+ for no other AI can do,” stated Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s VP of Alexa and Echo, in an interview with TechCrunch. “And I think that’s a really interesting statistic about Alexa+ for two reasons.
He continued, “First, because customers depend on Alexa for unique tasks. For example, you can send a photograph of an old family recipe to Alexa and then receive spoken guidance through the cooking process in your kitchen, substitute ingredients with what you have on hand, and successfully complete the entire task.”
However, he noted that the remaining 24% of users are utilizing Alexa for functions that other AIs can perform — suggesting a potential shift of their AI usage towards Alexa+.
Initially, Alexa.com will be exclusively available to Early Access customers who log in with their Amazon account. Amazon has been progressively rolling out Early Access since Alexa+’s introduction early last year.
Rausch informed us that tens of millions of consumers now have access to Alexa+, and they are engaging in two to three times more conversations with it compared to the original Alexa assistant. Specifically, he stated that users are shopping three times more and using recipes five times more frequently with Alexa+. Additionally, heavy smart home users are employing Alexa+ 50% more for smart home control, as opposed to the original Alexa.
Nonetheless, across social media and online forums, there have been complaints regarding Alexa+’s errors and inaccuracies. Rausch, however, believes these complaints are over-represented online. He reported that the average number of individuals opting out of the Alexa+ experience after trying it is in the low single digits, or “effectively … almost none.”
“Ninety-seven percent of Alexa devices support Alexa+, and we observe that customers are adopting Alexa across all those many years and many generations of devices,” Rausch added. “All of Alexa’s original capabilities, including the tens of thousands of services and devices that Alexa was integrated with, are carried forward to the Alexa+ experience.”