Amazon just flipped the switch on Alexa+ for every U.S. customer, marking the company's biggest AI push yet into American homes. The generative AI-powered assistant is now free with Prime membership across all devices, while non-Prime users get limited access via mobile and web. With tens of millions already testing the upgraded voice assistant during its year-long beta, Amazon is betting that giving away premium AI features will cement its lead in the smart home wars.
Amazon is making its biggest consumer AI bet official. Alexa+, the company's generative AI overhaul of its voice assistant, is now available to all U.S. customers as of Wednesday, with unlimited free access bundled into Prime membership. The move brings AI chatbot capabilities to an estimated 200 million Prime subscribers, potentially dwarfing the user bases of standalone AI assistants.
"We have tens of millions of customers using Alexa+ now, and now we're going to make it available to all Prime members," Daniel Rausch, VP of Alexa and Echo at Amazon, told TechCrunch in an interview. "Prime members enjoy unlimited access - it's basically a paid tier level of access that we're including in Prime now."
The launch caps a year-long beta period that started when Amazon first unveiled the upgraded assistant in February 2025. Unlike the original Alexa, which relied on rigid command structures, Alexa+ is model agnostic - running on a mix of Amazon's own foundation models and third-party AI to handle whatever task is thrown at it. That flexibility shows in the numbers. During beta testing, customers had 2 to 3 times more conversations with Alexa+ compared to the original version, according to Amazon's internal data.
Music streaming jumped 25% after users upgraded, while recipe features saw 5x growth in engagement. Those metrics suggest people aren't just trying the AI assistant once - they're changing how they interact with their devices daily.
But Amazon had to iron out serious kinks before this wide release. Beta testers complained Alexa+ was too chatty, interrupting conversations at awkward moments. Others hated the new AI-generated voice. The company responded by revamping the onboarding experience to highlight voice customization options, including keeping Alexa's original voice (now enhanced with AI-powered inflection as voice option No. 2).
