Aug 19: Amazon is auto-upgrading every Fire TV to its AI Alexa+ — no opt-in, no Prime required

Amazon announced Aug 19 that Alexa+, its AI-powered assistant that used to cost $19.99 per month for non-Prime members, is now free on all compatible Fire TV devices in the U.S. — and households will be upgraded to Alexa+ automatically, with nothing to download or sign up for. It covers all the current-generation Fire TV Sticks, the Fire TV Cube, Amazon Ember smart TVs, and Hisense and Panasonic sets with Alexa built in. Amazon pitches it as a conversational helper that can also control your smart home and display your Ring camera feeds on the TV. It showed up across multiple outlets in this morning's sweep (Engadget, TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, Amazon's own newsroom) — a living-room AI that listens for the whole family just became the default.