Amazon’s consumer boss reveals how he plans for Alexa and cameras to help run your life

Panos Panay leads Amazon’s consumer electronics business. The company recently launched a series of new products, ranging from a colour Kindle to a hi-fi speaker and a Ring doorbell that can help you find your dog.

Panay sat down with The Independent soon after the keynote that unveiled the products, slickly dressed in black T-shirt and a dark grey jacket with an immaculately subtle check. If you didn’t look closely, you’d think it was plain black.

But looking closely seems to be key to what Panay does, and that’s reflected in how he talks. He is thoughtful and considered, and his answers to the most superficial questions have depth and intensity.

The new products include the new Echo Studio speaker, which is compatible with the advanced personal assistant Alexa Plus. There was also the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, a large-format colour-screen ebook reader which also encourages you to write on it and Fire TVs with the smart assistant on board. In different ways, they seem to be intensely personal products, I suggest.

“Well, they are personal. One of the first things I ask my team is, did you buy the product that you built? If you're going to make a product, you need to know who you're going to buy it for, not who you're going to sell it to. There's a big difference,” Panay says.

Alexa Plus, the new, advanced personal assistant compatible with the new speakers and TVs, uses AI, as does Search Party, a new feature coming to Ring smart doorbells, made by Amazon. At the keynote, it was shown that users could report when their dog had gone missing and Ring could search video on nearby doorbells. If a free-roaming dog is spotted, Ring will ask the owner of that doorbell if they have permission to share the relevant video with the dog owner.

Amazon has also shown off other capabilities, including another one involving a dog. In a separate demonstration, an Amazon exec asked Alexa Plus to remind his son Jonah to feed the dog. It indicates a complex series of events that you’d have to look carefully to see.

“There are so many things going on there. Do you have a Ring camera focused on the dog bowl? Alexa, over time, realises the dog usually gets fed before noon. through that camera that you chose to put there. It's not like an event. That's what you chose,” Panay says, stressing that even people sensitive to privacy issues would recognise this was a personal choice by the household. When the Ring camera next sees him, more events kick into action.

“Alexa, when it sees Jonah, goes back to the dog bowl, checks if the dog ate today. If the dog hasn't eaten today, when it sees Jonah, Alexa says, ‘Jonah, make sure you feed the dog today.’ Every one of those steps is useful,” Panay says.

A camera pointing at rubbish bins can help Alexa Plus to remind your kids to take out the rubbish on the right day. If a smart doorbell sees the person who’s arrived is wearing shoes (which is frankly quite likely), and you prefer no shoes worn indoors, then, “Alexa just tells you that you need to take your shoes off. There are subtle things that are AI based, but also very personal, that are delightful, and they start to transform what's possible, within the guidelines of the permissions you give it,” Panay explains.

Panay mentions privacy and security several times, to reassure, perhaps, that Alexa is only listening when she should be and that everything remains private.

AI is important of course, especially to Alexa Plus, which has yet to arrive in the UK. But the new products seemed to have taken a step forward in design, too. Is that an aesthetic thing or a customer thing?

“It's not an aesthetic thing and it's an aesthetic thing,” Panay says. “We want our customers to have pride in what they bought. I think you should give your products as much attention as you possibly can but also manage it to the price point that a customer needs. This is a hard trade-off. You go back to the customer and say this is where it lands for greatness, for a great product.”

One of the new products was the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, coming to the UK in 2026. It’s a large-screen Kindle using the same screen tech as regular Kindles, but it’s in colour and it responds to touch from a smart stylus.

“We made that thing as thin we possibly could, to get the bezels just perfect to get it to glide right in front of you to make sure it disappears. There's a little trick to it. The first read was too perfect. Everything is symmetrical, everything is square. It makes you pause, and you just kind of wonder What's missing? And, you know, a great product, there's a first read, and there's a second read. The second read is more important. The first read is an emotional connection to the product. The second read is the useful piece of it. And so, I added a little bit of imperfection to the product that won't tell you what it was, but quite literally, designed in an imperfection. To move your eyes on a second read. Now, is that aesthetics? Kind of.”

Panay then mentions the 3D knit mesh fabric on the Echo Dot Max, designed to be seamless. “The idea of that manufacturing process was to get one seamless knit fabric that was acoustically transparent. When you look at it, you stare at it long enough, and you can't even see it. That's a product that belongs in the home. Like a beautiful bouquet of flowers, you'd see it the first day, but by day three, it would just make your home nicer. You wouldn't even know it's there. That's one concept. where the perfection, without an imperfection, the product just goes away.”

Something else that becomes second nature may also be Alexa Plus. How has the advanced personal assistant been working in the first few months since its launch in the US?

“What's surprising is the level of natural conversation. I expected it, but not at the level that it's happening. The engagement is pretty awesome. Hmm. It's really cool. People just talk to Alexa. It's just there, and if you use it once or twice, you don't forget that it's there, even though it's not in your face. It'd be much easier to answer your questions if Alexa was here. You could ask her. It’s been delightful. And she's getting smarter. More personal.” And when can we expect it in the UK? “It’s coming, I promise,” Panay tells me. “We’ll be there soon enough.”