Alexa+ is billed as a major upgrade that includes individual voice recognition through Alexa Voice ID, nuanced calendar scheduling, Ring home security system integrations, and product purchasing capabilities. It’s Amazon’s latest effort to generate a profit from Alexa, which lost $25 billion in revenue between 2007-2021 according to The Wall Street Journal last year. While Alexa+ will be added to all Prime subscriptions, users without Prime can enroll in the program for $19.99 per month.
On March 14, many Echo owners received an email from Amazon informing them that their smart devices will soon no longer be able to process Alexa voice requests locally. As Ars Technica first reported, however, the notice apparently only went out to Echo users who already had the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” setting enabled on their devices. When selected, the privacy setting previously allowed Echo to carry out user commands without first sending the audio files to cloud-based servers. But beginning with the debut of Alexa+ on March 28, Amazon’s cloud services will need to process all recorded audio.