Amazon unveils new Echo devices, powered by its Al, Alexa+

Summary

At its annual hardware event, Amazon introduced a new lineup of Echo devices, built specifically for its AI assistant, Alexa+, which has already rolled out to millions of customers through its early access program. To showcase the AI’s capabilities, Amazon is releasing four new Echo devices with improved processing power and memory: the Echo Dot Max, Echo Studio, Echo Show 8, and Echo Show 11. Key to the devices are the Alexa+ integrations, allowing the speakers to respond to more queries than earlier models, offering support for natural language conversations, more complex questions, and soon, more add-ons and capabilities. This will later include an Alexa+ Store, where users can explore services from brands like Fandango, GrubHub, Lyft, Priceline, Taskrabbit, Thumbtack, and Yahoo Sports. The devices will also be able to manage new or existing subscriptions with Amazon’s own services like Amazon Music, Amazon Kids+, or Alexa Emergency Assist and customize their Alexa experience. The new Echo devices launching today run on Amazon’s custom-designed silicon chips, the AZ3 and AZ3 Pro, which include an AI Accelerator designed to run AI edge models. Image Credits:Amazon The AZ3 enables better conversation detection on the Echo Dot, letting people talk to the device from anywhere in the room, while still filtering out background noise. The chip also improves detection of the wake word by over 50%, Amazon claims. The other three devices — the Studio, Show 8, and 11 — use the AZ3 Pro, which adds support for advanced language models and vision transformers. Plus, the AZ3 Pro-enabled devices include Ominisense, a custom sensor platform for ambient AI that uses the 13-megapixel camera on our new Echo Show devices, audio, ultrasound, Wi-Fi radar, accelerometer, and Wi-Fi channel state information (CSI). With this feature, the devices allow Alexa to act on events happening in the home, like delivering a reminder when a particular person walks in the room or alerting you to an o...