The worldwide AI craze set its sights on voice assistants in 2025. This year, it arrived at both third-party and primary voice assistants, including Google (Google Assistant is now becoming Gemini for Home) and most notably, Alexa.

The new, large language model-fueled version of Alexa is called Alexa Plus. As I wrote earlier this year, it's been in beta for a long time, but after some delays, I have had early access for many months now, experimenting with its new conversational abilities and the updated versions of its third-party apps and home device connections.

The result is a surprisingly large advance for voice assistants, something that feels great to use but has limited application if you don't make much use of voice assistants already. That makes the high price tag for non-Prime users difficult to swallow. Nonetheless, I think Alexa Plus is showing us a glimpse of how all these chatty bots could prove more useful -- although flaws still remain.

Talking to Alexa finally feels like, well, talking

The core of Alexa Plus is very similar to the old version of Alexa, but it's been filtered through LLM machine learning trained on human language, so it can put its responses together in patterns that resemble more casual human speech. The difference is noticeable and welcome.

Even if you don't like it when ChatGPT or Gemini on your phone tries to chat you up, there's something refreshing about a voice assistant sounding more human. The colder, terse responses of old Alexa give way to something that really feels warmer. It may take longer to explain an answer, but you typically get more information too, such as whether you should bundle up for rainy weather or the nuances behind what you thought was a yes or no question.

That approach isn't always perfect (see below), but those human-sounding summaries improve what came before. For my household, which uses Alexa to talk about weather, traffic, reminders, smart home control, scheduling, cooking, TV shows and various trivia, the switch to Plus had few drawbacks. Its conversational abilities also mean you can add onto commands, chain additional questions and treat voice assistant prompts more like natural conversations without constantly reusing the wake word.

The primary technical downside I noticed during my months of testing was that, at the beginning, Alexa Plus had a delay before starting to chat, when you could almost hear the AI processing. Over time, I've noticed this delay becoming shorter until the wait time more closely resembles using the old Alexa. Other than this, Alexa Plus proved very accurate, better at understanding commands than my experiments with Gemini for Home thus far.

And what about privacy? Well, Amazon first prepped for Alexa Plus in early 2025; it made changes to require home speakers like the Echo to analyze your voice commands in the cloud, a feature you could previously turn off. It's not hard to see why -- Amazon wants as much voice data as possible to monitor Alexa Plus and continue to train the AI model. I can understand if that makes some nervous about the privacy implications, something today's AI continues to grapple with.

New tricks, some very welcome

Voice assistants have always been trained with machine learning -- they were an early wave version of the chatbots that are so ubiquitous today. Fortunately, Alexa Plus offers more than just more evolved conversation. It's also an opportunity for Amazon to integrate Alexa more with useful apps and capabilities beyond the old Alexa "Skills."

The latest integrations, available through the Alexa Plus Store in the app, make Alexa far more useful for me than before. Linking accounts still takes a bit of work depending on the company Alexa has partnered with, but it's generally smoother than before, and the apps themselves proved especially useful with Alexa's more in-depth command abilities.

One of my favorites is the new support for the Uber app (old Alexa support for Uber was canceled years ago). Once connected, I could schedule Ubers on the fly with a voice command and some follow-up details as I was making plans. It supports Uber Eats too, if I wanted to order a snack without pulling the app up, and it all works quite well. I also enjoyed using OpenTable for reservations and connecting with Ticketmaster for easy ticket buys. Upcoming app support includes TaskRabbit, Grubhub, Fandango and Yelp, solidly filling in Alexa's personal assistant role.

In addition to third-party control options, Alexa Plus has more smart home support, including better capabilities to shift music between speakers, set up music or shows (or get recommendations for both) and create routines. It also brings easier video viewing with brands like Ring and adds Alexa Plus conversational greetings to compatible doorbells, a feature I particularly like, although I don't always use a Ring doorbell.

If you're wondering, "Where were all these conversational app options on the old Alexa?" I have the same question. Now that they're here, along with the new understanding Amazon's LLMs bring, Alexa Plus feels like the version of Alexa that we deserved all along.

Fees for thee, but not for me

And what do all these Alexa Plus upgrades cost? Well, nothing -- for me, at least, because I'm a long-term Amazon Prime subscriber and Alexa Plus is a free upgrade for, uh, Primers. But if you aren't part of Amazon Prime, you'll need to pay $20 a month for this AI voice assistant.

That's a steep price, albeit comparable to alternatives like the fully unleashed version of Gemini for Home, which costs $20 a month through Google's Home Premium Advanced subscription.

Here, Alexa Plus sharply diverges in value for price. For those who are already part of Prime, it offers plenty of upsides and few downsides, for free. But for those who'd have to pay, this chatty upgrade just isn't worth the equivalent of a full streaming subscription, at least not right now.

Amazon appears to be pushing as many people as possible to a Prime subscription ($15 a month, even less than a solo Alexa Plus subscription), with Alexa Plus as the latest tactic. But if you already have the Alexa app on your phone and Echo devices in your home, chances are good you're a Prime subscriber or more open to becoming one, so their calculus makes sense.

Alexa Plus downsides: Chatbots are still their own worst enemy

As I said, Alexa Plus isn't flawless. And its flaws closely resemble the issues our AI experts have seen in ChatGPT and similar chatbots trained on human language. They're too eager to please, too ready to confirm our requests, convinced they can do anything and completely unaware of when they're wrong.

I saw this problem crop up several times while using Alexa Plus, especially in combination with my Echo Show smart display, which Alexa Plus doesn't always seem well-trained in controlling. Here's one good example: During my last tests on Alexa Plus, I discovered that the timers I was setting weren't showing up on my Echo Show display home screen. That was one of my favorite features while cooking, so I asked Alexa Plus to display current timers continuously on the home screen.

"OK!" agreed Alexa Plus. "Here are your current timers, and I'll display them continuously on the home screen from now on." Except she didn't. The timers immediately vanished instead. I quizzed Alexa several more times to try and get my timers to stay up, each time with the same result. Alexa agreed, very enthusiastically, about what I wanted and happily told me she had done it, without actually doing anything at all (I still haven't figured out a fix for the timers).

I ran into similar problems when asking Alexa to do other tasks, from adjusting what ads I saw on the Show (something I doubted I could change anyway) to correcting locations and updating settings. The voice assistant is very willing to promise exactly what you want and apologize for getting things wrong, but doesn't make any changes. It's a problem LLM-style AIs seem to struggle with.

On a side note, Alexa Plus on the Echo Show has a new interface that pops up when motion sensing detects someone nearby. It includes chatty messages like "Reminder: I'm always in your corner" and "Ready to dive into whatever's on your mind," plus Alexa's new cursive winding into stars, hands, hearts and more. Those little notes may sound good in theory, but in practice, it's weird and a bit parasocial. That's one part of the new Alexa I could do without.

Is Alexa Plus worth it for you?

Alexa Plus works great for me because I like its conversational add-ons and new app integrations, I have lots of Echo devices around, and I get it completely for free. If you're like me, you'll likely enjoy experimenting with the new voice companion, too.

But if you're not an Amazon Prime user or don't give voice assistants frequent commands, AI upgrades like this aren't quite worth the $20 price of admission. And I don't blame you if some aspects of AI-upgraded Alexa give you pause, especially when it suffers from chatbot problems like agreeing with whatever you say while doing the opposite.

Overall, I'm glad to see this evolution of voice assistants, and I think Alexa Plus has come the furthest with what this technology can really do. It needs some work, but that's not surprising, especially when it's still technically in early access. If you're a Prime member, think about seeing if this is the voice assistant overhaul you were waiting for.