Amazon makes Alexa Plus free on compatible Fire TVs

A viewer can now ask a compatible Fire TV for “a top-rated thriller” instead of remembering a title. Amazon is automatically upgrading users in the US to Alexa Plus for free, bringing conversational search and smart-home controls to supported televisions and streaming devices without a Prime membership or a separate subscription.

The change covers current-generation Amazon Fire TV Sticks, the Fire TV Cube, Amazon Ember smart TVs and other televisions with Alexa Plus built in, including models from Hisense and Panasonic. Users do not need to download an app or sign up. Previously, people without Amazon Prime paid $19.99 per month for Alexa Plus.

The assistant interprets natural-language requests. It can recommend films by mood, theme, age or popularity, jump to specific scenes and answer questions about what is onscreen. It can also act as a control panel for connected devices, letting viewers manage lighting and door locks or pull up Ring camera feeds on the television.

Amazon says Alexa Plus customers now have nearly twice as many conversations on Fire TV as they did with the original Alexa. That suggests people are interacting with the TV more often rather than using it only as a passive source of entertainment, although the measurement comes from Amazon and no independent adoption data is provided here. The move follows similar AI assistant upgrades from Google TV and Roku.

And so, concretely, US owners of compatible Fire TV hardware get richer search and smart-home control without paying the former non-Prime fee or changing devices. The immediate limit is reach: the rollout is confined to the US, and Amazon only says that additional devices and regions may be added over time.