Amazon has shared an impressive vision of an "agentic" future, where its improved Alexa, Alexa+, handles countless mundane tasks, from booking restaurants to finding appliance repairmen, in a fully autonomous and intelligent way. If Amazon can deliver, it could be the first out of the gate with a comprehensive, consumer-focused agent tool.

The company hopes to marry a more natural, expressive Alexa, powered by generative AI models, with the ability to tap into first- and third-party apps, services, and platforms. According to Amazon Alexa and Echo VP Daniel Rausch, "We believe that the future is full of agents... And we've also always believed that in a world full of AI, these agents should interact with each other. They should interoperate seamlessly for customers."

Agents, a nebulous and increasingly diluted term referring to AI models that can take actions on a user's behalf, are the next big thing in AI. The tech industry sees agents as the key to extracting value from increasingly sophisticated models. Agents promise to knock out low-hanging chores and agenda items, boosting people's – and businesses' – overall productivity.

However, agents have largely underwhelmed so far. Major AI labs, including Anthropic and OpenAI, have launched agents that can take control of a browser to perform actions, but they often make mistakes and require a fair degree of intervention to accomplish more involved tasks. Other ambitious attempts at agents, like Google's Project Mariner, remain in the prototype stage, without committed release windows.

Amazon's demos of Alexa+, which is scheduled to launch in preview starting next month, depicted a more polished agentic experience – one with few technical hurdles. The company showed the assistant extracting information from a range of sources, including emails, calendars, and stored preferences, to help with daily errands. In one preview, Alexa+ built a grocery shopping list, then ordered items via integrations with Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and other local chains.

In another demo, the company highlighted how Alexa+ can automatically purchase products on Amazon when they go on sale, and reserve spa and fitness appointments through wellness app Vagaro. The agentic capabilities don't stop there, according to Amazon. Alexa+ can place food delivery orders through GrubHub, hail an Uber, find tickets to upcoming concerts on Ticketmaster, put together a travel itinerary drawing on sources like Tripadvisor, and even extract key dates and times from an event flyer to set a reminder.

While the demos were impressive, it's unclear how well Alexa+ will perform in real-world scenarios. Many of the demos were highly choreographed, and Amazon didn't allow attendees to use the new assistant at length. The company's biggest challenge will be overcoming the technical limitations of today's AI tech. Alexa+ has reportedly been delayed repeatedly due to misbehaving models; earlier versions of the experience couldn't answer questions correctly and struggled to turn smart lights off and on.

Rivals' baby steps in the direction of agentic tools have suffered their own setbacks. ChatGPT deep research, OpenAI's agentic model for compiling research reports, sometimes hallucinates. Google's Gemini chatbot, meanwhile, spits out factually wrong summaries of emails. It remains to be seen if Amazon can overcome these challenges and deliver on its agentic vision.

If Amazon can succeed, it could be a game-changer for the company, which has invested heavily in Alexa without significant revenue to show for it. The company's hardware division has reportedly burned through billions of dollars. With an Alexa-compatible speaker already in many homes, Amazon is wagering that Alexa+ will be a no-brainer for many users. Alexa+ users willing to fork over their data stand to benefit from a more personalized, tailored agent experience.

It's no accident that Alexa+ – normally priced at $19.99 a month – will be free for Prime subscribers, Amazon's most dedicated user cohort. We'll have to wait to put Alexa+ through its paces to know if it comes close to fulfilling Amazon's agentic sales pitch. If it does, that'd be a very impressive feat indeed – and might just give Amazon the lead in the consumer agent race.