After inventing the smart speaker market with Alexa, the company unveiled Alexa+ as the future of the system in 2025, launching dedicated hardware for the new voice assistant at the end of the year.
While Alexa+ is only available in the US and Canada for now, the service will come to the UK and beyond, and 2026 seems like a likely launch date for it. When Amazon launched its new speakers, such as the Echo Dot Max, the press release said that Alexa+ would be supported “once available in the UK”.
That was it for launch information, but there seems to be a plan for the genAI voice assistant to launch here, and the fact that this was mentioned with the launch of hardware suggests that the voice assistant can’t be too far away.
Will Alexa+ bring people back to voice?
When Alexa first launched, the voice assistant was something everyone wanted. It felt as though the computer from Star Trek was finally here. Soon, people had multiple Alexa speakers throughout their homes and voice seemed like it was the future.
But, then, things changed. Sure, there were some privacy concerns, but I’d notice at friends’ homes that Alexa devices were there but unplugged, or that devices that had been in a room were gone.
Even I, as a smart home reviewer, have cut down on the number of smart speakers I have. I mostly use the Echo Show 15 I have in my office for answering the door, and a bit of smart home control. For the most part, I find physical smart buttons and automations easier and faster for smart home control.
Alexa+ is different. GenAI might be a bit rubbish for a lot of things, unless you want to generate an image full of a six-fingered person or get some basic facts wrong, but it is better at direct responses and better at understanding the gist of what you’re asking.
There’s a thing that I’ll call ‘Alexa speak’ where you have to phrase a request in a specific way to get the smart speaker to respond properly. With GenAI and Alexa+ you should no longer need to do that, and a more conversational approach should work.
Will that be enough to turn people back on to using voice rather than apps and physical controls? We’ll have to wait and see, but 2026 will either prove that voice is back in vogue or a busted flush.
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