Amazon just dropped a new voice model called Nova, and it’s a big step up from the usual Alexa experience. It’s fast, customizable, and meant for third-party apps—not just your smart speaker.

Nova runs on something called Sonic, which lets it respond in as little as 140 milliseconds. Translation: it talks back like a human, not a laggy robot.

It’s built for developers and businesses to use in apps, kiosks, devices—basically, anywhere voice could be useful but usually isn’t. It also works in multiple languages and doesn’t need heavy-duty hardware to run.

You can personalize it using Amazon’s LLMs or your own, so it sounds like your brand and not a generic assistant reading a script.

Amazon’s clearly trying to compete with OpenAI and Google, but they’re betting big on voice. And honestly, Nova sounds like it might actually make that a good idea.