Amazon is taking another step in positioning Alexa+ among the other smart assistants on the market. The company has decided to include it on compatible Fire TV devices in the United States, whether we’re subscribed to Prime or use a standard account. With this change, and after the update, our TV gives us a direct gateway to Alexa+, with conversational searches, recommendations, and smart home control.
All you need is a compatible Fire TV
Alexa+ costs $19.99 a month without Prime and adds a layer of intelligence to Amazon’s well-known Alexa. Do we want those benefits for free? All we need is any current Fire TV Stick model, a Fire TV Cube, one of the Amazon Ember televisions, or even some Hisense and Panasonic models. For those of us who already use one of these devices, the update rolls out automatically and significantly expands what we can do from our couch.
Much more than searching for a movie
Alexa+ understands requests like “a very highly rated thriller” and lets us refine the search until we find exactly what we want. In this context, the television stops being just a screen and starts helping us decide what to watch. While Google is bRinging Gemini to devices with Google TV and the current Siri on Apple TV is getting ready to receive the new Siri AI with new hardware, the industry’s direction is clear: do more with our television.
Along these lines, Amazon’s proposal with Alexa+ lets us control home devices and show Ring cameras on the television. AI is much more useful when it’s right where we need it, and Amazon is following that path with its Fire TV devices.
