Amazon is upgrading Alexa Plus with new features, but you'll have to wait

Amazon released the Alexa Plus AI assistant in a limited capacity last year. Since then, we’ve seen it expand to more customers, and Amazon made it available for free to all Fire TV users in the US last month. Alexa Plus is now ready for its biggest update yet.

In addition to refreshing the Fire TV Stick lineup with new models today, the e-commerce giant has announced a significant revamp of Alexa Plus. Key among the new additions is a dedicated hub for the AI assistant on Fire TV devices, as well as overall improvements to its reasoning capabilities.

Additionally, Alexa Plus will be able to take into account real-world context, such as cultural references, awards, and events. The assistant will also tap into your subscriptions and watch history to fine-tune its responses.

Amazon is also refreshing the Alexa Plus interface to support follow-up questions, threaded conversations, and the ability to return to older queries.

Some example prompts mentioned by Amazon include:

• “Alexa, I’m diving into the Marvel universe. Show me the movies in the universe timeline order”
• “Alexa, find shows that were nominated for the recent Emmys but got snubbed”
• “Alexa, show me the highest rated book-to-screen movie adaptations”
• “Alexa, show me the games I should watch this weekend”

Meanwhile, the Alexa Plus hub on Fire TV will focus on improving content recommendations and will also include “personalized prompt suggestions,” per the company. Your Alexa Plus conversations will be accessible across Amazon’s ecosystem of devices, including the Alexa smartphone app and compatible Echo devices.

Lastly, Amazon says it is bringing the Alexa Plus experience to the Fire TV mobile app, offering both text and voice search options. More crucially, this integration will let users tap into Alexa Plus’ smarts to do a variety of things. This includes sharing a picture of something (even a meme) that reminds you of a movie or TV series, then asking the assistant about it.

Amazon says users can share online articles containing film or TV recommendations, and the chatbot will then curate all the movies/shows mentioned into a list. Viewers can then instantly add any of these items to their watchlist, directly from the Fire TV app.

The experience will also include a streaming service icon that lets you start watching the film or show on your phone immediately. As you would expect, this title would then appear in your Continue Watching row for later perusal.

Unfortunately, you will have to wait a while before experiencing these Alexa Plus-related upgrades. Amazon says the upgraded AI assistant for Fire TV devices will roll out in November for people in the US, starting with the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Gen), Fire TV Cube, Amazon Ember TVs, and TVs with Fire TV built in, including ones from TCL and Hisense.

On the other hand, the latest Fire TV Stick 4K will have to wait until next year to get the new Alexa Plus features, which is also when Amazon will expand it to other regions.

This upgraded Fire TV mobile app will arrive later this year for US customers, though Amazon hasn’t provided a specific timeline. The rest of the world will have to wait until next year to experience these new capabilities in the Fire TV app, according to Amazon.