GenAI war continues as Alexa upgrades Amazon’s smart home

August 6, 2026 — 5:45pm

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It’s a time of transition for big tech’s original voice assistants. Google has already rolled out its Gemini for Home to existing smart speakers and displays, while Apple is planning a new generative AI Siri for later this year. This week it’s Amazon’s turn, with the e-commerce giant announcing Alexa is launching in Australia.

However, with a new breed of AI assistants from OpenAI, Anthropic and others already on all our devices, is it too late for the previous generation of chatty helpers?

Supplanting the original Alexa that has been active in Australia for eight years, the new generative AI version is being promoted as more conversational, deeply personalised, and capable of completing real-world tasks. Built on Amazon’s own Bedrock cloud infrastructure, the new Alexa can choose between dozens of AI models including from Anthropic, Meta and others depending on the query, meaning it should adapt to give fast, efficient answers or complete longer tasks.

As with the new Google and Apple assistants, Alexa promises to go beyond the precisely worded, transactional interactions we’ve generally had with smart speakers to hear the weather or set kitchen timers. Amazon says the new system can intuit your meaning, parse rambling language and use context to help understand what you want. It remembers things you tell it about your preferences and........

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