Amazon has launched its newest version of Alexa in Australia, claiming it is an Australian-specific variant of a digital personal assistant powered by AI.
Alexa+ was released to Australians on Thursday, and has several new features designed to help it memorise key information, personal preferences and daily life habits, which are meant to make it more efficient and helpful.
Nine.com.au was given special early access to Amazon’s Alexa+ ahead of its Australian launch. Patrick Brischetto
Nine.com.au was given special access to an event before its official release, and found the latest version of Alexa has been tailored to suit Australian tastes and cultures.
Alexa+ has an understanding of Australian slang words, properly responds to Australian accents and mannerism, and has an increased knowledge of the country’s unique sporting codes.
Senior technical product manager at Alexa in Australia, Blake Nussey, told nine.com.au that Alexa+ and its chatty nature is a way to make it more personalised to Aussie users and to create a better experience.
“[With] those improvements in their conversational nature, it allows us to really live up to that vision we originally had, which is near the world’s best personal assistant,” he said.
Blake Nussey told nine.com.au making Alexa+ Australian-friendly was part of delivering a greater and more personalised customer experience. Supplied
He told a Q-and-A at the launch this was a key focus of his team through developing Alexa+ for an Australian audience.
“We embed cultural instructions to make Alexa+ understand Australia,” he said.
“We start to assess how they understand your culture through a very comprehensive evaluation process.”
Alexa+ has been available in North America since earlier in the year, and Michele Butti, Vice President of Alexa International, told nine.com.au customer feedback helped reinforce the importance of the technology being catered to a local audience.
“Large English models are predominantly trained there with English US data,” he explained, saying this would skew the responses it would give.
“You will get a very American-centric cultural answer,” he said, adding this was something Amazon wanted to avoid.
Alexa+ heavily leans on generative AI, which helps it draft emails and text messages, find substitutions for recipes, and to create more meaningful and personalised conversations.
Companies around the world are looking to stay ahead in the race to harness generative AI in its products, with Apple also releasing a new variant of its personal assistant, Siri, which also uses the technology.
Nussey admits its “not easy” to stay ahead in an industry “moving at a rapid pace”, but claims Amazon tries not to be motivated by what its competition is doing.
“[We] just focus on our customer,” he told nine.com.au.
“Everything comes down to them.
“Of course, competitors are important, and what they’re doing, we can learn from that, but at the end of the day, it always comes back to the customer, so that’s how we continue to move and operate.”