This morning, Amazon (finally) announced Alexa+, a new version of Alexa that moves from traditional voice assistant interactions to a generative AI-based experience. Rebuilding Alexa from the ground up has been a long and challenging process—adapting a product with 600 million users, thousands of capabilities, and the broad potential of generative AI was no small feat.
The new Alexa still sets timers and plays music but is now more conversational, better at understanding intent, and far more capable, thanks to its generative AI-powered reasoning engine
That said, this newsletter isn’t about consumer electronics, so I’ll spare you the details—you can check out examples in action and sign up for the waitlist here.
What I will focus on is that Alexa+ is Amazon’s answer to ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and other AI platforms.
Personally, I’m thrilled by this announcement. The last thing I did before leaving Amazon Alexa four years ago was submit a PR/FAQ proposal to leadership outlining what I believed Alexa could become—essentially, what Amazon is now launching. Although my role was leading Alexa’s global privacy, compliance, and risk efforts, I strongly believed that for Alexa to be truly useful, it needed access to more information, not less—a controversial stance for someone in my position.
But here’s the reality: AI needs data to be useful. For consumers, that means access to your calendar, email, documents, shopping history, and smart home devices. For businesses, it means your company data.
Now, with Alexa+, Amazon is making that a reality. They’re launching a new website at Alexa.com and new mobile apps that will allow users to connect their data and interact with Alexa through a computer or phone interface.
These new interfaces position Alexa+ as a direct competitor to ChatGPT and similar products, offering both text and voice-based AI interactions. However, Alexa+ stands out by providing deeper integration with personal data and greater task execution capabilities than current AI assistants. For instance, one demo showcased Alexa+ uploading and discussing legal documents from a homeowners association.
Alexa+ will be free for Prime members and $19.99 per month for non-members. And don’t be surprised if a business-focused version—likely powered by Amazon Q—launches soon.
An Israel-based cybersecurity firm has discovered a critical security flaw in Microsoft’s Copilot Studio—one that could leave your company’s private data exposed to the internet.
The issue boils down to two major risks:
If you’re using Microsoft Copilot Studio, you need to lock it down immediately. The security researchers have provided a tool to scan your domain for publicly accessible AI agents—check it as soon as possible.
But even if you don’t use Copilot Studio, you still need to be highly attentive to AI security issues.
Here’s another story: Last year, I helped a client build an HR chatbot using a well-known AI chatbot platform. While testing, I discovered that no security controls were in place to restrict access to the chatbot when it was embedded in a web page. When I contacted the vendor about the issue, they initially dismissed it as non-issue. Only after multiple escalations—including directly to the CEO—did they finally acknowledge the risk and implement security controls. The fix took weeks.
This is just one of many examples of AI security failures happening across businesses. AI adoption is accelerating, and companies are rolling out AI tools without proper security, governance, or oversight. Organizations are giving employees access to AI without ensuring they understand security best practices, which creates a massive risk exposure. Employees are now able to create full applications, automate work, and build AI models using company data. But without safeguards, these tools can become liabilities instead of assets.
AI adoption is already happening in your company, whether you’ve planned for it or not. When I begin working with a new client, I survey employees about AI use. On average, 20-30% of employees report they are already using AI tools in their daily work, even if leadership hasn’t officially approved them. That means sensitive company data is already being processed by AI tools without oversight. This is a major risk that needs to be addressed immediately.
If your company doesn’t have an AI adoption plan, now is the time to implement one. My AI SPRINT framework provides a structured approach to managing AI adoption effectively:
It begins with leadership taking action. The first step, SPARK Action, is about assigning ownership of AI strategy to a senior executive. This should be someone at the C-suite level—whether it’s the CEO, CTO, Strategy, Innovation or HR Leader—it just needs to be someone who understands both the business opportunities AI presents, high-level technology and governance concepts, and change management.
Once ownership is established, the next step is POSITION Company, where leadership works together to create an AI strategy that answers critical questions: How will AI impact the company? What are the organization’s goals with AI? How will those goals be achieved, and on what timeline? What security and governance measures need to be in place to ensure AI is used safely? These discussions need to involve the full leadership team to ensure alignment across the organization.
After strategy development, the focus shifts to RALLY Employees, which involves engaging employees and ensuring they are using AI effectively and securely. This means setting clear guidelines, providing training, and giving employees access to the right tools within a controlled and secure environment. AI is not just another software rollout—it requires ongoing education, governance, and adaptation to changing technology and risks.
I'll stop there for today's newsletter, because few companies have reached this point in their AI adoption journey. But here are links if you want to revisit past newsletters for each stage of the framework:
SPARK Action, POSITION Company, RALLY Employees, INTEGRATE into Processes, ENABLE Ongoing Training, and TRAILBLAZE with new Products.
And if you want help, or just to chat about it, reach out! I have helped companies at each step of the way, and have everything you need to be successful. From leadership and staff workshops, keynote talks, online education, policies and templates, and partners, I can get you launched quickly and effectively.
I'm conducting research to uncover the real state of AI adoption—not the marketing hype disguised as research. If you are a business leader and have 5 minutes, I’d love your input!
Take this quick survey on AI adoption in your organization. Your insights will help shape a future whitepaper on the topic.
Creating presentations is one of the biggest time drains in any business. Over the past two years, I’ve tested countless AI-powered presentation tools, searching for one that could finally free me from the tedium of PowerPoint. Till now, they’ve all sucked.
But I think I’ve finally found one worthy of recommendation: Gamma.app.
This is the first AI presentation tool I’ve used that actually delivers on the promise of AI creating high-quality presentations across multiple formats.
You can start in four ways:
Next, choose your format: a slide deck, website, document, or social media post.
Then, set your preferences:
Gamma builds your presentation live, and within minutes, you have a professional-quality draft.
Last week, I shared how I used ChatGPT for deep research to plan a family trip to Chicago. This week, I used Gamma.app to turn that research into a presentation. Check it out here. I made zero modifications—this is purely AI-generated.
I went from idea (I need to research a family trip) to a family-ready presentation in about 10 minutes of AI use.
If I had spent more time refining it, I could have:
For business use, I’ve already created a custom theme for my business with my logos, colors, and fonts, and I plan to start sending both research and proposals to clients with it in the next couple weeks.
While Gamma.app is impressive, there are a few things to keep in mind:
At just $10 a month, it’s a steal.
Check it out and let me know what you think!
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