The biggest surprise at Amazon’s press conference last week was the lack of hardware announcements. Traditionally, Amazon announces dozens of new gadgets at its events, but this time, Amazon spent 70 minutes talking about software. Specifically, Alexa Plus, its new generative AI-powered Alexa voice assistant. And that was exactly the right move.

Alexa Plus will start rolling out next month in early access. It's an opt-in service and won't be available to everyone through an over-the-air update in March.

Amazon has been focused on bringing generative AI to Alexa for the past few years, hitting multiple delays in launching new features that the company first announced in September 2023. The delayed Alexa 2.