For me, one of the most surprising things at Amazon's lavish Alexa event earlier this week was what didn't happen. Oh no, Amazon goes big at these events, aiming a firehose of products at the quivering journalists in attendance. The parade goes at a breathless pace, one after another, so fast that you can barely keep up. Uncharacteristically, Amazon held its fire last fall, skipping its usual September event in favor of a smaller, Kindles-only gathering in October, featuring ex-Microsoft exec and new Amazon devices chief Panos Panay. So when Amazon announced it was having an "Alexa-focused" event this week, I braced myself.

Amazon's new and improved version of Alexa is here, and it's called Alexa . The next-gen upgrade is more conversational, can execute complex tasks, and is much more personalized. While the rollout starts next month on select Echo Show devices, Amazon claims it'll eventually be available on every Alexa-powered device the company has shipped. It'll cost 20 per month but will be free for Amazon customers. Here's everything you need to know about Amazon's new and improved virtual assistant.

If you've had it up to here with dumb responses from Alexa, get ready for a big change. At a glitzy event in New York City on Wednesday, Amazon unveiled–again–its AI-enhanced and "completely re-architectured" Alexa, and we'll all soon have a chance to kick the tires ourselves. Starting next month, Amazon will kick off a public preview for the new Alexa, which it's calling Alexa . The public preview will begin gradually, with more users gradually being added to the group. This news is part of TechHive's in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers.

Amazon held its first major product event of the year on Wednesday and, as expected, it was largely about Alexa. The company first announced its next-gen, AI-powered voice assistant back in 2023, but technical issues forced Amazon to delay its formal unveiling and rollout. An Alexa upgrade means that Amazon has a swathe of new devices ready to support the latest version of the voice assistant. Amazon's hardware chief, Panos Panay, and his devices and services team were at the event to show off Alexa . Here's a rundown of everything Amazon announced at its first devices event of 2025: After lots (and lots) of boring rambling about generative AI from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy at Wednesday's event, Panay took the mic to start sharing the actual news. Alexa is the name of the company's upgraded voice assistant.

Following years of development, Amazon's next-generation digital assistant is ready for public use. The model powering Alexa can detect tone and mood and respond accordingly, with a completely new voice -- one that sounds more natural. Moreover, it's only necessary to say "Alexa" once to wake the assistant. It will then follow the conversation. Panay said Alexa has contextual awareness, with the ability to "remember" earlier parts of a conversation.

Panos Panay has a Diet Coke problem. It's a topic that quickly came up when I walked into the small interview room, after he offered me a choice of beverages and I said my partner has a similar addiction. After a quick conversation on the advantages of drinking plain water over diet colas, I knew his wife, like me, advocates for less soda, but I still knew nothing of how much the man actually consumed a day. It was Panay's first launch event with members of the media since he left Microsoft last year to lead Amazon's devices and services team. And the instant I walked into the event space at The Shed in New York, I thought "this feels like a Panos event."

Seventeen years is an odd anniversary to call out. But at an event launching four new Kindles, Amazon's head of devices and services Panos Panay reminded a group of media that "Kindle is 17 years in the making, almost to the day." Panay added that the device is currently seeing its highest sales numbers, and that 20.8 billion pages are read each month on a Kindle. Since the introduction of the Kindle Scribe in 2022, there has been even more development in e-paper writing tablets, with a notable recent product in the reMarkable Paper Pro. While that 580 device supports a color writing experience, Amazon's Kindle Scribe still only works in black and white. But it might offer enough by way of software updates to make up for its monochrome manner.

"Panos Panay" may not be an anagram for "passion," but at Microsoft, it was pretty darn close. Panos Panay, the chief product officer for Microsoft, unexpectedly stepped down on Tuesday, after serving nearly twenty years at the company. Panay rose to the ranks of chief product officer, overseeing the development of Windows and its complementary Surface PC line. Interestingly, Panay gave no specific reason for leaving, and at press time had only posted a single message announcing his departure on Twitter/X. Even more interestingly, Panay had originally said he would oversee the launch of Microsoft's next Surface devices at an event this week, on Sept. 21.

This week, Microsoft offered its first look at Windows Copilot, an AI-powered assistant that appears to be a one-stop shop for managing all sorts of tasks within Windows 11. Microsoft showed Windows Copilot standing in for Bing Chat, the AI chatbot that's rivaled OpenAI's ChatGPT as the main AI assistants of the Web. But Windows Copilot appears to be much more, as a concierge of sorts for everything that your PC and its apps can do. There's a real question, however, of what class of hardware Windows Copilot will demand -- and Microsoft offered the first hints of how it may manage the diversity of PCs that wish to run it. Windows Copilot, at least for now, appears to be a sidebar that for right now will open up as a column on the right side of your screen, where your Windows notifications typically reside.

Microsoft will roll out on Tuesday an update to Windows 11 that puts its new AI-powered Bing capabilities front and center on its taskbar, one of the operating system's most widely used features, in the latest sign the company is doubling down on the buzzy technology despite some recent controversy. With the update, the AI tool will be accessible from the Windows search box, which allows users to directly access files, settings and perform web queries. The search bar has more than half a billion users every month, according to the company, making it prime real estate for eventually exposing more users to the new feature. Earlier this month, Microsoft said it was looking for ways to rein in Bing's AI chatbot after users highlighted responses that ranged from inaccurate to emotionally reactive. Despite such early hiccups, the company told CNN "as a whole, we are feeling very good about the product experience for people" and continues to learn from feedback. "AI itself is reinventing right now … and it's just the beginning," Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer, told CNN ahead of Tuesday's launch.