{"id":483616,"date":"2026-03-19T07:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/483616\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T07:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:23:07","slug":"amazon-alexas-uk-personality-to-change-with-echo-ai-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/483616\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Alexa&#8217;s UK personality to change with Echo AI update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;UK consumers will notice an immediate difference,&#8221; she added. &#8220;Using Alexa+ is a very different experience.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For example, I asked the current Alexa whether I needed an umbrella today. It responded, &#8220;no rain is expected today&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At a UK demo of Alexa+, it responded, &#8220;actually, you can leave the brolly at home, with sunny skies and no rain in the forecast, you&#8217;ll be sorted without it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ed Freed from the marketing agency Rapp UK once described Alexa as &#8220;nothing more than expensive kitchen timers&#8221; for most users.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Amazon claims 52% of the UK has tried the Echo out, and there have been 114 billion &#8220;interactions&#8221; with Alexa in the UK since 2023 &#8211; roughly 1,500 interactions per person in the population.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Smart speakers have faced criticism for languishing while other AI tools have rapidly taken off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One of Alexa&#8217;s rivals, Google Nest, is becoming Gemini for Home, incorporating the tech giant&#8217;s Gemini AI platform, but its smart speaker screen display hardware has not been updated since 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidpolice.com\/waiting-for-updated-google-home-smart-display\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">notes the Android Police website, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Alexa+ will be free for those with an Amazon Prime account (currently \u00a395 per year) or \u00a319.99 a month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">New Echo devices will have immediate access, while those with older devices will have to sign up online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Echo has reportedly cost Amazon billions of dollars in losses and failed to generated a revenue stream, as customers tended to purchase the device itself and then did not buy anything else with it. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In 2022 and 2025 Amazon targeted its &#8220;device and services&#8221; department for redundancies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Even if Alexa+ does not attract huge subscription revenue, having more detailed conversations with the Echo could provide Amazon with more data about its users and help it target ads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;UK consumers will notice an immediate difference,&#8221; she added. &#8220;Using Alexa+ is a very different experience.&#8221; For example,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-483616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}