Alexa+ is Coming to Amazon’s Ring Doorbells

Amazon is bringing its Alexa+ assistant to its Ring smart doorbells. A new Alexa+ Greetings feature is launching today in beta in the US and Canada, and it lets the assistant respond to visitors, manage deliveries, and more.

Alexa+ first launched on select Amazon Echo speakers, smart displays, Fire TV devices, and Fire tablets running Fire OS 8 or newer. Alexa+ Greetings is currently only available on the Ring Wired Doorbell Pro (3rd Gen) and Ring Wired Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen), but a Ring Premium Plan ($19.99/month) is also required. The feature also requires customers to enable Ring Video descriptions, a beta feature that can send push notifications about what’s happening when motion is detected by Ring cameras.

“When someone rings your doorbell, Ring’s camera determines who’s there based on what they’re wearing, holding, or their actions,” the company explained. “For example, it can distinguish a person in a delivery uniform dropping off a package from someone casually stopping by asking to speak with the resident. Alexa uses this visual context, any information the visitor shares, and the instructions it’s been given to help manage interactions on your behalf.”

If Amazon also offers a set of standard greetings for the most common scenarios, Ring owners can set up personalized instructions for Alexa+ from the Ring app. That can be telling delivery persons what to do with packages depending on the day of the week or the time of day.

Alexa+ can also politely tell people doing door-to-door sales to go away, recognize familiar people like friends and family, take messages from them, and respond to follow-up questions. All these interactions can be reviewed in the Ring app alongside the video footage.

While Amazon will make Alexa+ free with a Prime subscription when the next-gen assistant goes out of early access, Alexa+ Greetings will require the most expensive Ring Premium subscription that also includes 24/7 recording, smart video search, and AI features like video descriptions. Still, the feature may really help to turn the smart doorbells into “a trusted assistant at your front door 24/7,” as Amazon said.