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.

About 18 months after the company first previewed the “next-gen Alexa” built with generative AI, it unveiled Alexa+, and early access will be available starting in March. Alexa+ will exist alongside the older Alexa and will cost $20 a month,

Alexa Plus is here but it's only supported by four Echo products as of now, and won't be supported by more than half a dozen Echo devices.