Amazon
Alexa is one of the most popular voice assistants on the planet, and whilst she’s very good at understanding commands or questions, she’s not the greatest conversationalist on the planet. All of that is about to change, however, thanks to a new feature called Alexa Let’s Chat.
Amazon has harnessed the power of generative AI to create a version of Alexa that’s more like conversing with a real person with impressive new abilities. What is Alexa Let’s Chat, exactly? Let’s take a look at how it works and how you can get it.
What is Alexa Let’s Chat?
Alexa Let’s Chat is a new way to interact with your Alexa devices that harnesses the power of AI. It uses Amazon’s new large language model (LLM) to provide more natural responses, allowing you to hold a more fluid conversation with Alexa. You get a genuine back-and-forth without the need to say ‘Alexa’ before everything you ask.
Alexa Let’s Chat is based on five core principles: to be conversational, to have genuine real-world applications, to be personalised to you and your family, to have personality, and to be trustworthy.
What can Alexa Let’s Chat Do?
Just start a conversation by saying, ‘Alexa, let’s chat,’ and you can have a genuine two-way conversation with your Alexa device. Alexa will respond to your queries, and you can continue the conversation without the need to say ‘Alexa’ again, so it’s much more like a real-world conversation. Alexa will also make inferences from the previous parts of the conversation. For example, if you start a conversation by asking about the capital of Brazil, Alexa will know that you’re talking about Brasilia when you ask, “How many people live there?”
Alexa Let’s Chat also gives Alexa more personality; you can now ask Alexa’s opinions, such as its favourite sports team or whether pineapple belongs on pizza. It feels more like talking to a real person than a voice assistant. Alexa Let’s Chat still features jokes and Easter eggs, a popular part of the original Alexa voice assistant.
Alexa Let’s Chat can also harness the power of generative AI to complete impressively complex tasks. For example, you can ask Alexa to draft a message inviting people to a murder mystery party and even include instructions such as ‘make it mysterious’ to the mix. It will generate the message, read it out for you, and even send it to the Alexa app on your phone. You can also give smart home instructions that would previously have been hard to interpret, such as “close the blinds to make it feel more moody.”
How do I get Alexa Let’s Chat?
The Alexa Let’s Chat feature isn’t currently available, but Amazon says that it will be coming soon to customers in the US.
What devices will support Alexa Let’s Chat?
Customers in the US with an Echo device can try out a free preview of Alexa Let’s Chat on the devices they already own. Amazon says the feature will work on any Echo device, even on the very first Amazon Echo that was launched all the way back in 2014.