Marketplace Tech · Monday, September 28, 2026
Amazon's updated Alexa Plus, powered by a large language model, is designed to go beyond research and actively complete tasks for users. Daniel Rausch, VP of Amazon's Alexa and Echo, explained that Alexa Plus can now manage calendars, book restaurant reservations, and purchase tickets, aiming to fully resolve user requests.
“So in the age of generative AI, you have this truly conversational interaction with Alexa. She elegantly introduces, you know, options. She'll pick a restaurant for me, through open table set up a reservation, find me concert tickets on Ticketmaster. Actually get all the way to done, buying them, not just help me with the research part, but actually complete the task.”
“I I think that, you know, unlike other chatbots, Alexa helps you get all the way to done. Name a popular, uh, browser-based chatbot. Uh, you can do product research and then also not shop. You can plan a date night, but also not book a table or find tickets to the concert as I was just mentioning or put it on your calendar.”
“I think the, the value perceived by customers with Alexa is already reflected in the early data that we see. So, you know, it was a key strategic decision to put Alexa Plus as a benefit into Prime. We see 25% lift on prime sign-ups once a customer tries Alexa Plus. So, when you use Alexa Plus to shop, we see a 40% bigger basket size at the end of it.”