00:00Engagement with Alexa Plus is up two to three times over the original Alexa,
00:04but even these things that I didn't really think could grow, honestly.
00:11Today, we got some exciting news from Amazon. Alexa Plus is coming to the UK.
00:15I'm here with Daniel Rausch, Amazon's VP of Alexa and Echo, to find out more about the new service
00:21and its rollout. Daniel, hi, lovely to meet you. Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me
00:25on. Thank you very much for coming and for getting over the jet lag to be with us today.
00:29We'll see how I do. No guarantees.
00:31So, earlier today in your introduction speech, Eula gave us a really interesting stat about the
00:36number of Echo devices in the home being more than the amount of people that start their day with a
00:40cup of tea, which is a very British stat, right? Very British.
00:43How would you lose Alexa Plus to design the ultimate morning tea ritual?
00:47Well, I think, you know, for me, the morning is about centering myself. I usually listen to the news.
00:52I listen to some music. We kick off a whole host of things because I have three kids,
00:57so there's a lot happening. It's a very busy household.
01:00I think for our home, the ultimate morning ritual looks something like get everyone out of bed.
01:04Everyone's using different music timer or music alarms, rather, to get themselves up.
01:09Then it's down to the breakfast table. You know, I'm usually listening to the
01:13news and music while I'm making breakfast. I love making breakfast for the family.
01:17And then it's getting everyone out the door. So, alarms going off, timers going off,
01:22reminders going off. Does Ezra have to pack his crew kit for practice that day?
01:27What does Ellie have after school? She has a whole host of things going on.
01:30So, that's probably the ultimate morning, is that Alexa's helping us get that whole thing done.
01:34And Alexa obviously can have the information on what's going on in your school diary,
01:38the calendar invites that you might add to the system, right?
01:41Right. That's right. So, Alexa, in my house, Alexa has all four of the calendars that matter to us,
01:46basically. And that brings together all the different school events and what's going on
01:50with my wife and her work and myself. So, it all happens in one place. And in fact,
01:54at the beginning of the school year, we saw this increase in traffic with Alexa Plus because
01:59people were emailing Alexa the school calendars and she adds everything to the calendar. So,
02:03we were among those families as well.
02:05And that was going to be one of my next questions, actually, is what are some of the
02:08uses you're seeing the most come through from the US rollout you've had so far?
02:11Yeah. I would say there's kind of like, I think about it in two ways. One is,
02:14you know, it's sort of like the original Alexa greatest hits. So,
02:18these are things like smart home control or music. And all of these things are up dramatically. So,
02:23in aggregate, engagement with Alexa Plus is up two to three times over the original Alexa. But even
02:29these things that I didn't really think could grow, honestly, like music is so big and there's so
02:34many billions of listening hours. But music goes up 25% in terms of streaming time when a customer
02:40turns on Alexa Plus. And it's because it's just more delightful. It's not like customers have 25%
02:44more time. They just find music they're more interested in or a new artist or they go back
02:49through a discography and learn something new. I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan, but Alexa is deeper on
02:54Bob Dylan than I am. And I learned something new every time I talked to her. So,
02:57I would say the greatest hits are way up. And then there's all the new things that Alexa can do.
03:02You know, I'm in the US. I'll use it to book ride share or as I demoed here today,
03:06you know, we'll book a table for lunch together. So, you know, the whole thing is what's elevating
03:10that engagement level. And then as part of that,
03:12obviously it's been a beta rollout in the US right so far. So,
03:15I'm sure that there's some challenges along the way. How have you sort of navigated those?
03:18So, I think, you know, we're getting a lot of great feedback from customers. I've never shipped a
03:22product this easy to report a bug. So, you know, you can simply say to Alexa what feedback you have,
03:28and then that helps us learn that we've got an edge to sand somewhere. We've also
03:32learned things like when Alexa introduces herself, for example, now she offers that
03:36she could choose a different voice for you, for example. So, some customers, it's a minority of
03:41them, they don't necessarily like the new voices. They like, you know, they're a little more set
03:44in their ways maybe with their Alexa experience. So, as we're onboarding, a customer will say,
03:48hey, it's this easy to change a voice. You just ask for new ones and I'll try them on for
03:52size for
03:53you. So, I would say it's different kinds of things like that. So, obviously over here in the UK,
03:57we have some different consumer protection laws, data protection laws. Right. How have you navigated
04:01those? Is there a big difference between US and UK Alexa Plus service because of it? No. In fact,
04:07you know, we've been in the UK for 10 years with Alexa, so we're super familiar with all the different
04:12regulations and Alexa's, you know, compliant with everything that we need to be compliant with. That
04:16meant, I guess, that Alexa Plus was that much easier to build for the UK. And is there any difference
04:20in
04:20the kind of data it collects? Nothing is different about the Alexa Plus experience with respect to data.
04:25Customers have the same degree of transparency and control. That's what really matters most
04:28for customers. And it turns out, if you build products with transparency and control, you also,
04:33generally speaking, meet every regulation and legal requirement because it's really just about that
04:38for customers. We have the Alexa Privacy Hub is still there. It's where all your settings are. You
04:42can see everything Alexa heard. You can delete things. You can delete everything that Alexa heard. You
04:47can control all of your data settings around training. So, everything's in the same place. We didn't move
04:52anything around there. And it applies to the Alexa Plus experience in whole.
04:55And then, when we're talking about the subscription-free service, right, has there
04:59been any changes or impact to that off the back of Alexa Plus rolling out? Because I imagine there's
05:03loads of computing power going into all the generative AI use cases, right?
05:06Yeah. I mean, I think we're, you know, we have to apply large language models to this Alexa Plus
05:11experience. There were over 70 different models in Alexa Plus doing different tasks because different
05:16models are great for different things. But there hasn't been any change to the, what I would call,
05:20original Alexa experience. We strongly encourage customers to try out the new one and ask for an
05:25invite or go buy one of our new devices. It comes out of the box with any new device purchase
05:30here
05:30in the UK. So, those are both great ways to try it. And that's with the Echo Studio.Max Show
05:358 and
05:35Show 11 that it comes out of the box, right? Correct. There you go. So, you can check our
05:38description box below for links to those. And then you mentioned in your welcome speech today as well
05:42about generative AI being the thing that really unlocks Amazon's original vision for Alexa. So,
05:47what's your next vision for Alexa moving forwards? Well, I think one of the other things I talked
05:52about was just having Alexa with you throughout the day. So, we talked about here in the next
05:57couple of weeks, the browser enabled Alexa at alexa.co.uk will be live for Alexa Plus customers,
06:04our newly redesigned mobile app. But I think you'll also see us working on personal devices as well. We
06:10already have Echo Frames and Echo Buds. We see that customers love taking Alexa Plus with them throughout their
06:16day. But I'd also stay tuned for more. I think we're excited to keep finding new ways to make
06:23sure Alexa is available everywhere customers want Alexa Plus. The promise of that ambient
06:27intelligence being with you throughout the day, customers just love the convenience of having Alexa
06:33at their fingertips and at the ready whenever they want to get something done and then fading in the
06:37background when they've completed their tasks. So, stay tuned for more. And then I guess just out of
06:42interest, what's your favorite thing to do with Alexa Plus? Well, it might not be a favorite thing
06:46for me, but I think what has happened in my house is that because the smart home has gotten so
06:52much
06:52easier to use, I'm no longer an IT administrator, so to speak. So, it's a favorite thing of mine,
06:59but it's because everyone else is using Alexa Plus so effectively. What we see, you know, I talked about
07:04music before growing so much with Alexa Plus, smart home engagement actually goes up 50% at the end of
07:10the
07:10first month and it's not because customers are turning on and off their lights more or locking
07:14their door more. It's because everyone in the house can now use the smart home fully and I've
07:19seen that in my own home. So, sort of a trick answer to your question where it's not me using
07:24it,
07:24it's everyone else using it. To be fair, that's probably going to be my favorite answer as well
07:27because I get daily texts from my mum asking how to do something with some device. I love that.
07:31She'll be very ready. Less and less and hopefully no more. Exactly, exactly. That is all we have time for
07:37today. Make sure to check out the description box below where we'll have linked all of the stories
07:41we've referenced as well as the products we talked about today. Also, hit the subscribe button for
07:45more tech news, reviews, how to's and more.
Comments