We're definitely beta testing this technology": is Alexa+ really bad, or are our expectations for free services too high?

• Prime members are being automatically upgraded to Alexa+
• Users remain mixed on the service
• You can opt out and return to regular old Alexa

When Amazon announced Alexa+, the future looked bright for the AI-bolstered smart assistant, poised to offer agentic assistance that could rival even the likes of Google Gemini and ChatGPT.

However, while the service boasts a next-gen upgrade that could revolutionize home assistants as we know them, there's a long road ahead before many of the promised features are fully functional (or, indeed, available to users at all).

There's a glaringly obvious reason for this; Alexa+ is still in Early Access, meaning all current users are effectively part of one great big beta test, as noted by Reddit users in r/AmazonEcho. However, that beta test seems to have expanded to a bunch of Prime customers via an automatic enrollment in the service, as reported ...