Amazon’s Alexa+ includes a feature that Siri has always needed

Siri has many opportunities for improvement, but there’s one voice assistant feature Amazon’s Alexa+ has that Apple has always needed — long before the age of modern generative AI.

Alexa+, like Siri but with generative AI

Amazon officially announced the long awaited generative AI version of its Alexa voice assistant today. Alexa+, as it’s called, is a next generation AI assistant that will work across newer products with Alexa integration.

You’d be forgiven if you thought that Amazon might have discontinued work on Alexa. That’s because its AI-infused version of Alexa took more than a year longer to complete.

Now Amazon is promising free early access to customers who own or purchase an Echo Show 21, 15, 10, or 8. Alexa+ also works with Fire TV and Fire tablets.

What Amazon showed off today is impressive from a modern generative AI perspective. Read more about Alexa+ in our AI-focused Neural column from today.

A single voice assistant experience everywhere

The news includes the announcement that a new app for Alexa+ is coming to iPhone and Android, and Alexa.com will be updated and serve as the home on the web for Alexa+.

Amazon also emphasizes that Alexa+ will be available pretty much everywhere. But it’s the benefit of having the same Alexa+ experience from device to device that Siri and Apple devices lack.

You can start a conversation with Alexa+ on your Echo device, continue on the go with your phone or in the car, and pick it up on your computer—Alexa+ remembers the context, and can continue the conversation across any of your endpoints.

Not only is Siri on your Apple Watch unaware of what you’ve discussed with Siri on your HomePod or Siri on your Apple TV, but the “improved” version of Siri doesn’t even run on any of those devices.

Apple Intelligence is limited to newer iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Vision Pro. That means the Siri experience is as good as it will ever get on products without Apple Intelligence. Siri’s performance on devices with Apple Intelligence is another story.

But something that has simply made Siri less personal and useful for years has been how disconnected the experience is between devices.

There’s no concept of picking up a Siri discussion on one device from another. Greater contextual awareness is an Apple Intelligence feature for Siri, but it’s limited to context between recent chats on the same device.

That’s a shame because Siri is arguably available in more places than Alexa between the iPhone and Apple Watch.

The Siri disadvantage

For Apple, Siri has always existed as a feature on a product, not a feature in the cloud that’s accessible from any product. Alexa+ is taking a different approach. There are many products, but only one Alexa+.

So Amazon will offer the same Alexa+ from device to device with contextual awareness while Siri remains siloed to individual devices with different feature sets and no concept of memory.

That disadvantage for Siri adds to the fact that Siri doesn’t yet have the support of its own large language model to support world knowledge. It instead allows you to send a request out to a watered-down version ChatGPT.

Apple is reportedly working on its own first-party chatbot that could bring Siri up to speed, but first Apple has to finish developing the features that it has already announced and hasn’t released.

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