Amazon’s upgraded AI assistant, Alexa Plus, can now create podcasts on “virtually any topic,” the company announced on Monday.
With the new feature, users can give Alexa Plus a topic, and the AI assistant will first provide an overview of what its AI hosts plan to discuss. Users can then guide the conversation, adjust the direction, and choose how long the episode should be before Alexa starts generating the podcast.
Amazon shared several examples of “Alexa Podcasts,” including AI-generated hosts discussing the history of the Roman Empire, new music, and expectations for the World Cup. The company says users can also ask Alexa Plus to create audio lessons about the Apollo missions or generate a podcast episode about a new hobby, such as photography.
The feature works similarly to the AI-generated podcast tool available in Google’s NotebookLM. Microsoft Edge also recently added a similar feature that can turn tabs or online content into AI-powered podcast-style audio.
Amazon says the podcast episodes will use information from around 200 news publications it has partnered with, including Reuters, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, Vox, and Politico.
The company rolled out Alexa Plus to all users in the US in February and has since added the upgraded assistant to its online marketplace.
If this article helped you, please consider supporting our work. Every small contribution keeps Abijita.com independent and running.
Once an AI podcast episode is ready, users will receive a notification on their Echo Show device and in the Alexa app. They can tap the notification to play it, access it from the Music and More section on Echo Show, or find it through the Alexa app.
