The Alexa+ trick I'm most excited about for my smart home

Alexa+, Amazon’s freshly unveiled generative AI update, promises to take the Alexa virtual assistant to the next level. You can expect Alexa+ to do things that your traditional Alexa can’t, such as generate richer answers to questions that previously would have received canned responses.

 Alexa+ will also be capable of engaging in more natural conversations, eliminating the need to use your “Alexa voice” and enunciate each syllable of your request to the voice assistant. Instead, it will understand you when you speak naturally. It will also maintain the context of a conversation throughout; for example, you can give it a file to peruse and ask multiple follow-up questions about it. 

Also: Not all Echo devices will get Alexa+ – see if yours made the list

These are all very useful ways to leverage the generative AI power of Alexa+. Still, one of the things I’m most looking forward to is giving Amazon’s virtual assistant multiple prompts at once. 

Instead of asking, “Alexa, who was the first black woman in space?” and getting a predetermined response from an Alexa Answers contributor and being done with the subject, the voice assistant will generate the response and let you ask follow-up questions, like “What does she do today?” or ” How many others have reached space since her?”

With generative AI, you don’t have to limit yourself to giving Alexa a single command at a time; you can include multiple requests in a single sentence. Instead of saying, “Alexa, turn off the bathroom lights,” and then, “Alexa, turn on the bedroom lamp,” you could say, “Alexa, turn off the bathroom lights and turn on the bedroom lamp.”

Being able to ask multiple questions or give several smart home commands at once may not sound like a big deal, but commanding Alexa to control smart home devices more conversationally will be a game-changer for my household. I use Alexa primarily for smart home control and often rely on routines to complete multiple steps with a single command. While Alexa+ won’t eliminate the need to create many of these routines, it certainly gives me greater control over my devices in an easier way.

Also: Echo Pop vs Echo Dot: Which Alexa speaker should you choose?

I often want Alexa to turn off certain devices I’ve decided to exclude from my bedtime routine, such as the reading lamp and air purifier in my reading nook. With Alexa+, I can ask the voice assistant to do this without having to issue multiple commands one at a time. 

Alexa+ will also let you create routines using your voice instead of relying on the mobile app.