What is Alexa+? Everything you need to know about Amazon's new AI assistant (www.zdnet.com)

Amazon unveiled Alexa+ in February and began a staged Early Access rollout in spring 2025, bringing generative-AI capabilities to Echo devices and the Alexa ecosystem. Alexa+ upgrades Alexa from scripted responses to a more conversational, context-aware assistant that can hold multi-turn dialogs, remember user preferences (a Memory-like feature), read and answer questions about documents, and generate content. Amazon bundles the service with Prime or offers it as a standalone $20/month subscription — the same price as ChatGPT Plus — and has added updated Echo hardware (Echo Show 11, Echo Dot Max, Echo Studio and refreshed Show models) plus compatibility with many existing Echo devices, the Alexa app, Fire TVs and tablets. Technically, Alexa+ runs on Amazon Bedrock foundation models (including Nova and Anthropic models), enabling more natural cadence, longer context windows, and document processing that hints at multimodal capabilities on screen-equipped Echo Shows. The update also includes a redesigned Echo Show UI with adaptive displays and Ring integration for richer home-monitoring workflows. For the AI/ML community, Alexa+ signals Amazon’s push to close the gap with rivals (OpenAI, Google, Microsoft) by productizing Bedrock models at scale, spotlighting real-world challenges in memory, privacy, latency and subscription monetization as assistants transition from utility to platform.