AI
Amazon Rolls Out AI Upgrade for Alexa Plus to Control More Smart Home Brands
The updated assistant can now understand complex household commands and integrate with a broad ecosystem of connected appliances and services.
The Verge
Amazon is expanding Alexa Plus with new AI capabilities designed to interpret nuanced requests and relay them to the right device within a growing network of smart home brands.
Wider Device Support and More Natural Commands#
The refreshed assistant can now work with smart appliances from Bosch, Delta, Ecovacs, iRobot, Yale Home, Whirlpool, Tapo, Eufy, and more—automatically steering voice instructions to the appropriate hardware. This means instead of forcing users into preset commands, the system can parse more conversational phrasing. In one scenario Amazon highlighted, a user might tell Alexa: "my kid's soccer jersey could use a deep clean, but the tag says cold wash only"—and the assistant would navigate a compatible washing machine's settings to select the proper cycle without further input.
New Integration Standard Speeds Adoption#
Behind the scenes, Amazon is implementing the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open-source technical framework that enables AI systems to connect with external tools and services more readily. The protocol is meant to simplify how device manufacturers and service providers plug into Alexa Plus, especially those offering capabilities that the old system couldn't support.
Growing List of Third-Party Partnerships#
More brands are entering the ecosystem throughout 2025. Priceline will let users explore hotel availability and complete bookings through voice alone. Meanwhile, several companies—Atom Tickets, Cengage, Fandango, and Taskrabbit among them—are preparing to handle payments directly via Amazon Wallet, streamlining checkout flows.
Other services rolling out later this year include Canva, Headspace, Lyft, Virgin Atlantic, and Weekend. This follows Alexa Plus's major launch in February, when it debuted with the ability to handle multi-step commands and voice-guided routine creation. Early integrations had been confined to a small set of partners—Ticketmaster, OpenTable, Uber, Thumbtack, Expedia, Yelp, Square, and Angi—but that foundation is now widening significantly.
