BMW is finally getting the next generation of its Alexa voice assistant, and it comes with a generative AI upgrade.
Amazon announced Monday that the 2026 BMW iX3 will be equipped with Alexa+, the same generative AI technology that powered the e-commerce giant’s millions of smart devices last year. This will be the first vehicle to be equipped with Amazon’s next-generation voice assistant, the companies announced at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
This announcement is part of Amazon’s efforts to bring LLM-powered voice and digital assistants to every device consumers touch, whether in their hands or in the driver’s seat. Alexa+ is already installed on over 600 million devices. And cars are next on the list.
Bringing a custom version of Alexa+ to the BMW iX3 will be an important test for Amazon. Automakers have struggled for years to bring voice assistants into cars that can handle complex functions and demands that go beyond a frustrated driver’s shout. Efforts to develop natural language processing, a form of AI that allows computers to understand and respond to human speech, have been going on for more than a decade. And while progress is being made, these systems can still be easily tripped up by humans.
BMW and Amazon’s Alexa+ partnership took three years.
BMW announced in 2022 that Amazon Alexa will be the basis of its next generation voice assistant. This meant that BMW not only built Alexa into its vehicles, but also built its own custom version using Amazon’s technology platform, known as Alexa Custom Assistant. That timeline was extended because Amazon was working on a car version of Alexa+. Alexa+ is a radically improved voice assistant developed and powered by an extensive language model that promises to deliver seamless, natural conversations just like speaking with a human.
Alexa+ was built using Amazon Bedrock, a service that allows AWS customers to build apps using generated AI models from Amazon and other third-party partners. Customers like BMW can customize the app with their own data.
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The end result, Amazon says, is a voice assistant that can break down complex requests, reason out steps, and take actions across a variety of services. For example, Amazon says users can start a conversation on an Alexa+-enabled Echo speaker in their home and continue the conversation in their BMW. Once in the car, users can make requests through the Alexa+ assistant that typically require opening various apps, such as music, navigation, or home security systems.
