Amazon brings Alexa+ to the UK

Amazon is bringing its new AI-powered conversational assistant, Alexa+, to the U.Ok., the primary nation to get the AI assistant exterior of North America.

The corporate is at present letting customers within the U.Ok. check out Alexa+ at no cost by way of an early entry program. Customers who purchase the brand new Amazon Echo will obtain an invitation for the early entry program, and the corporate says it plans to allow Alexa+ for “a whole bunch of 1000’s” of consumers within the coming weeks.

As soon as the early entry program ends, Prime subscribers will get to make use of Alexa+ at no cost, and non-Prime customers might want to pay £19.99 per thirty days. The corporate hasn’t specified when the early entry program ends.

Alexa+ works with Amazon’s new Echo gadgets, Hearth TV, and the Alexa app, and might carry conversational context from one gadget to a different. The corporate plans to increase assist for Alexa+ to browsers as nicely.

Amazon mentioned it has custom-made Alexa+ for U.Ok. clients, and the assistant can perceive native context in addition to generally used phrases.

“Native groups, together with engineers, linguists, and speech scientists at Amazon’s Tech Hub in Cambridge, UK, have used totally different strategies—similar to reinforcement studying, accent-neutral speech representations, and regional embeddings—to verify Alexa+ genuinely understands British clients,” the corporate mentioned in a weblog publish.

Amazon famous that customers can ask for recommendations from companies similar to OpenTable, JustEat, and Treatwell. They’ll additionally get their information from sources like The Impartial, The Guardian, Press Affiliation, and Future Publishing.

Amazon first unveiled Alexa+ in February 2025, however its rollout has been sluggish. By June, the corporate had simply given a million individuals entry to the brand new assistant within the U.S. Final month, it lastly made Alexa+ obtainable to all U.S.-based customers. The corporate had additionally launched early entry applications in Canada and Mexico.

Final month, the corporate launched new “persona” choices for Alexa+ to let customers customise the tone of responses. Earlier this month, Amazon rolled out an adult-only “Sassy” mode, however mentioned that the assistant gained’t assist NSFW content material.