AI Summary
5 min readThe many pluses and minuses of Alexa Plus
"I just want my smart home assistant to be my smart home assistant." That's the core tension Jen Tuoi, a Verge reporter who spent a year testing Alexa Plus, brings to this conversation about Amazon's AI-powered voice assistant. After twelve months of living with the system — through beta, through its February 2026 launch, and through the hardware announcements that followed — she has a clear-eyed take: Alexa Plus is genuinely better at home control than ever before, but its attempts to become a general-purpose AI assistant keep falling apart.
The smart home improvements are real
The most concrete gains came in the area Amazon has owned longest: voice control of connected devices. Setting up routines by voice alone has become a genuinely useful feature. Instead of diving into the notoriously clunky Alexa app to program a sequence of actions, you can simply say "I want the lights to turn on at this time every night and I want you to lock the door at this time every night" and it works. If something goes wrong, you can still tweak it in the app afterward — but the friction of initial setup is gone.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:02) **Episode Cold Open & Host Intro** - David Pierce kicks off the show, warning listeners about potential Alexa triggers, and introduces the main topics: Alexa Plus changes and a new Amazon tablet.
- 2 (00:42) **90 Seconds on The Verge: Domain Names, GTA 6, and Joe Rogan** - A news segment covering ICANN's new top-level domains, a GTA 6 leak, and Spotify's new deal with Joe Rogan.
- 3 (03:48) **Introducing the Topic: Alexa Plus and the Smart Home** - David and Jen begin their conversation about the current state of Alexa Plus and Amazon's hardware strategy.
- 4 (06:01) **A Year with Alexa Plus: The Core Assessment** - Jen gives her overall verdict on Alexa Plus after a year of testing, distinguishing between its smart home performance and its broader ambitions.
- 5 (09:10) **The Smart Home Wins: Voice Routines and Better Understanding** - Jen details the specific improvements in Alexa Plus for home control, highlighting the ability to create routines by voice.
- 6 (10:01) **The Smart Home Gap: What Alexa Still Can't Do** - Jen identifies the next frontier for smart home AI: deep, fine-grained control over individual device features.
- 7 (12:41) **The "Long Tail" of Smart Home Automation** - David and Jen discuss the practical, fiddly problems of home automation and how LLMs are starting to solve them.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Amazon is determined to turn Alexa Plus into a do-everything AI assistant that can compete with Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest. But after a year of testing, The Verge's Jen Tuohy has mixed feelings on how it's all going. And on whether a new tablet is the right way to fix it.
Further reading:
- It appears .agent and .agi are about to be the hot new domains
- GTA VI leaks continue with a lengthy (and very nude) gameplay video
- GTA VI will have in-game podcasts and at least six radio stations
- Joe Rogan and Spotify renew massive podcast deal
- Alexa Plus is better at running my home, but it’s not ready to run my life
- Hands-on with Amazon’s Alexa Tablet 12 Pro and its wild new matte display
- Amazon is phasing out Fire Tablets because they weren’t ‘giving customers what they were asking for’
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