Amazon will begin charging Australians to talk to its revamped Alexa voice assistant, and will open it to China’s DeepSeek – the model Canberra has banned from its own devices.
The Seattle-based behemoth has finally launched Alexa+ locally, 18 months after its unveiling in New York. It will cost $29.99 a month, unless you have an Amazon Prime subscription.
Alexa+ offers new capabilities – from understanding Aussie lingo, to more advanced features such as booking a table at a restaurant, or online shopping on your behalf.
It draws from 70 AI models, and will allow developers to access China’s DeepSeek, which is available on Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock marketplace, to build new apps for the assistant. Microsoft also offers China’s low-cost model on its enterprise cloud infrastructure such as Azure Foundry.
When it was launched in January last year, DeepSeek became one of the world’s most downloaded apps, shocking Silicon Valley, and several developers created “skills” to make it available on Alexa for customers to download. But the Australian government banned it from all government devices, saying it posed “an unacceptable level of security risk” to the commonwealth.
After surging to No.1 on Apple’s App Store early last year, DeepSeek’s momentum has cooled, and it’s slipped from the top 50 downloaded apps globally.
Asked about the developers accessing DeepSeek for Alexa+, Amazon vice-president responsible for Alexa outside the US Michele Butti said Bedrock was a “trusted” platform for AI builders.
“We have the big advantage of using anything that is available on Bedrock for developers. Amazon openly says that AWS and Bedrock are the best platform for any AI builder, and in US there is expression we eat our own dog food,” Butti said.
“AWS is one of the most trustable and sophisticated service provider, and therefore we trust that they made every service secure and everything that is on bedrock. It’s fair game for us.”
Its launch coincides with Amazon offering overnight delivery, afternoon same-day delivery and evening same-day delivery for Prime members in Sydney and Melbourne for purchases over $49.
Why is Amazon charging for Alexa+?
AI has become so expensive that Apple is also considering charging heavy users more to access its revamped Siri assistant. Graphic design darling Canva also issued a rare earnings downgrade from its internal forecasts, citing AI cost blowouts.
“Generative AI powered by large language models has a very different cost structure than the previous deterministic technology,” Butti said.
But what Amazon is buying with that spending is a shot at ChatGPT. It has rebuilt the Alexa app so the AI sits on the front screen rather than tucked behind device settings, and will launch Alexa.com.au in a browser, aimed at the longer research tasks people currently take to OpenAI and Google.
“There’s probably a convergence towards a more capable universal agent that can do multiple things,” Butti said.
Last year Australians asked the old Alexa, which will still be available for free, more than two billion questions.
But that assistant essentially matched words to commands, whereas, Alexa+ runs the same class of technology behind ChatGPT, and each answer draws on computer servers Amazon has to pay for.
What does Alexa+ do?
Alexa+ acts rather than answers. It books restaurant tables, unlocks front doors, checks video doorbell footage for parcels and orders goods from Amazon. Butti said high-risk jobs run on tightly controlled systems with a second check – a code for the door and an optional PIN before a purchase clears in order to avoid a “Home Alone” scenario in which children could run riot with the AI assistant.
“We have completely redesigned the Alexa app, so that right now the new Alexa+ app puts the AI capabilities right in front of you instead of being what we call a companion app,” Butti said.
“In the original, Alexa, you would use the app to set up a new device to set up your routines. Right now, you open that app to do anything you would do on other AI tools.”
Butti said Amazon aimed to limit the cost of servicing AI by building Alexa+ out of more than 70 different models and picking the cheapest one that can do the job. Turning on a light gets a small model. Planning a four-week South American holiday gets an expensive one.
Can it work outside the home?
Amazon is eyeing the commercial sector, particularly hospitality and aged-care operators.
“We are partnering with senior facilities to use Alexa+ in these facilities where they can provide support and companionship to seniors – so not just the usual home application,” Butti said.
“We have partnered with hospitality with large hotel chains so that customers getting to a hotel now can ask Alexa multiple things that they would have to call the front desk. And there are going to be many more.”
This article first appeared in The Australian as Amazon launches paid Alexa+ in Australia with access to China’s DeepSeek AI.
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