{"id":28246,"date":"2026-03-19T12:31:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=28246"},"modified":"2026-03-19T12:31:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:31:37","slug":"amazon-brings-alexa-to-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=28246","title":{"rendered":"Amazon brings Alexa+ to the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amazon is bringing its new AI-powered conversational assistant, Alexa+, to the U.K., the first country to get the AI assistant outside of North America.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company is currently letting users in the U.K. try out Alexa+ for free via an early access program. Users who <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/newalexa\">buy the new Amazon Echo<\/a> will receive an invite for the early access program, and the company says it plans to enable Alexa+ for \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of customers in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once the early access program ends, Prime subscribers will get to use Alexa+ for free, and non-Prime users will need to pay \u00a319.99 per month. The company hasn\u2019t specified when the early access program ends.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alexa+ works with Amazon\u2019s new Echo devices, Fire TV, and the Alexa app, and can carry conversational context from one device to another. The company plans to extend support for Alexa+ to browsers as well.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amazon said it has customized Alexa+ for U.K. customers, and the assistant can understand local context as well as commonly used phrases. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLocal teams, including engineers, linguists, and speech scientists at Amazon\u2019s Tech Hub in Cambridge, UK, have used different techniques\u2014such as reinforcement learning, accent-neutral speech representations, and regional embeddings\u2014to make sure Alexa+ genuinely understands British customers,\u201d the company <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aboutamazon.com\/news\/devices\/alexa-plus-international-launch\">said in a blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amazon noted that users can ask for suggestions from services such as OpenTable, JustEat, and Treatwell. They can also get their news from sources like The Independent, The Guardian, Press Association, and Future Publishing.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">San Francisco, CA<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">October 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amazon first unveiled <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/02\/26\/amazon-unveils-a-new-and-improved-alexa-alexa\/\">Alexa+ in February 2025<\/a>, but its rollout has been slow. By June, the company had just given <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/06\/23\/over-a-million-people-now-have-access-to-the-gen-ai-powered-alexa\/\">one million people access to the new assistant in the U.S.<\/a> Last month, it finally made <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/02\/04\/alexa-amazons-ai-assistant-is-now-available-to-everyone-in-the-u-s\/\">Alexa+ available to all U.S.-based users<\/a>. The company had also launched early access programs in Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last month, the company introduced new <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/02\/25\/amazons-ai-powered-alexa-gets-new-personality-options\/\">\u201cpersonality\u201d options for Alexa+<\/a> to let users customize the tone of responses. Earlier this month, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/03\/12\/alexa-gets-a-new-adults-only-personality-option-that-curses-but-wont-do-nsfw-content\/\">Amazon rolled out an adult-only \u201cSassy\u201d mode<\/a>, but said that the assistant won\u2019t support NSFW content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/03\/19\/amazon-brings-alexa-to-the-uk\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amazon is bringing its new AI-&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[249],"tags":[1932,374,56],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}