Amazon is quietly rolling out the last big pillar of its AI-powered Alexa+ vision: the Alexa.com website, bridging the gap between its Echo devices, mobile app, and consumer desktops.

The web portal means users can now interact with Alexa through a keyboard and mouse: accessing and continuing past Alexa chats, starting new ones, going back and forth between voice conversations in the living room and typed chats in the home office, etc. 

(Alexa.com is available initially to a subset users in the Alexa+ early access program, with access likely to expand in the coming weeks, so if you’re not seeing it yet, stay tuned.)

I’ve been trying it out, and I’m already finding it quite useful as an extension of the Alexa experience. In addition to expanding the chat functionality to the browser, the web interface offers fine-grained control over reminders, calendar appointments, uploaded files, and smart home devices. 

For example, I was able to edit a family reminder: changing the assigned person, adjusting the date and time, setting it to repeat weekly, and adding a flag for Alexa to follow up until it’s complete. All of this happened through simple clicks, much easier than talking Alexa through the details, in my experience.

The rollout of Alexa+ earlier this year also introduced the ability to email or upload documents to Alexa for summarization and reference. This made Alexa a lot more useful on its own. Now, with the online portal, it’s much easier to upload, access and delete files.

There’s also some nice smart home integration, with the ability to control lights and plugs, for example. It’s similar to the Alexa app, but nice to be able to access on the computer. 

In short, it’s a level of point-and-click precision that voice commands and the mobile app can’t offer. Within a few minutes of using Alexa.com, I had this sense of liberation, being able to interact with Alexa in the same way as anything else on the computer. What a concept! 

That said, I couldn’t help but wonder how much I’ll actually use it.

Three years after the launch of ChatGPT, my AI routines have become relatively entrenched. I’m having a hard time envisioning going to Alexa.com on my computer to start a chat rather than Gemini, NotebookLM, Claude, Perplexity or other AI tools that have become daily habits. 

Then again, for me, those tools are about work and individual tasks. Alexa is really the digital hub for my family. The introduction of better AI with Alexa+ has improved that experience over the past few months, and the web portal adds a whole new dimension. Family is why I’ll use it.

The Alexa+ integration goes even further for me since I’ve been talking to Alexa more and more via my Amazon Echo Buds on my phone when I’m out and about, although this is probably more illustrative of me being an edge case than anything else.

Within Amazon, Alexa+ sits at the top of the AI stack that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy talks about. It’s the consumer-facing layer for a company that has made a much bigger mark in AI with its cloud infrastructure and platforms. Alexa’s web launch fills a gap that’s been glaring for a while.

One thing I’d like to see is true Ring integration into the web experience — the ability to see and access smart home cameras from Alexa.com in addition to the existing Ring.com interface. 

The more Amazon can unify everything inside the web portal, the more useful it will be. No doubt I’ll come up with other feature requests as I continue to use it.

But for now, the simple act of using an AI-powered Alexa in a web browser is so mind-blowing, in such a basic way, that it’s hard not to wonder how much further along Amazon would be in the world of consumer AI if it had been able to make this happen a long time ago.