While Prime members get the Amazon Alexa+ assistant for free, Fire TV owners without Amazon’s subscription service have been paying $20 a month to take the new-generation AI-assistant for a spin.
Doesn’t make a lot of sense really, does it? Pay $20 a month for Alexa+ or pay $14.99 a month for Amazon Prime and all associated benefits and Alexa+? We’re not sure how many people chose that option. However, now some of them won’t have to, and it may be related to the forthcoming arrival of Siri AI on Apple devices including the rival Apple TV service.
Amazon says US-based owners of the latest Amazon Fire TV Sticks, Fire TV Cube, Amazon Ember smart TVs as well as – “and other smart TVs by trusted brands with Alexa+ built in, including Hisense and Panasonic” – can now access the enhanced Alexa+ assistant without forking over any additional cash.
That means cool new features like conversational search including discovery by mood, genre, favourite actor and more are available now. Users can say “recommend me a top-rated thriller”—and narrow down further with “something newer” or “with a female lead.”
Alexa+ on Fire TV devices also includes enhanced personalised context, knowledge of preferences and more relevant recommendations are available now.
The new smart home controls enable users to say things like: “Alexa, make it dimmer in here for a movie night” while the company is also smarter at understanding commands like “Alexa, show the front door” to access the camera, or “lock the door”.
Amazon says it is seeing much more engagement with Alexa since the update came to Fire TV devices. It says movie recommendations have improved so much that viewers are now picking the top option 40% more often, while they’re talking to Alexa+ on Fire TV almost twice as often.
Amazon says it is bringing the experience to more devices and more regions over time. You can see the currently supported devices here.
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