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Amazon Alexa Is Now Available to Everyone. Here's How to Turn It Off (2026)

WIRED

Alexa+ has been rolling out to everyone with a Prime membership, even if you didn't ask for it. Here's how to change it back. If Alexa's in your home, you might've been one of many users this month who were suddenly moved from the original Alexa to the new AI-powered Alexa+ voice assistant . Amazon announced in early January during CES that it'd be rolling out the new assistant to all Alexa+ Early Access customers, and that turns out to also include all Prime members, even if you weren't on the Early Access list. Alexa+ is still in Early Access, as it has been since it launched in spring last year, meaning that the assistant isn't fully complete, nor is it requiring you to pay the $20 monthly fee if you don't have Prime.


Adversarial Music: Real world Audio Adversary against Wake-word Detection System

Neural Information Processing Systems

Voice Assistants (VAs) such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant rely on wake-word detection to respond to people's commands, which could potentially be vulnerable to audio adversarial examples. In this work, we target our attack on the wake-word detection system. Our goal is to jam the model with some inconspicuous background music to deactivate the VAs while our audio adversary is present. We implemented an emulated wake-word detection system of Amazon Alexa based on recent publications.


Revealed: Amazon Alexa's most-asked questions of 2025 - including 'how tall is Tom Cruise?' and 'how long do I poach an egg for?'

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Ghislaine Maxwell's ultimate humiliation: Epstein's sex trafficker girlfriend poses in outrageous outfits and exposes herself in dozens of photos released from the billionaire paedophile's files I was falsely accused of being the Brown University shooter... Silent Trump flees growing storm over Epstein'cover-up' as he jets off for holidays without ANY comment Truth about THIS photo of Karoline Leavitt's face... and why if she was non-binary and disabled, Vanity Fair would never have done this: KENNEDY Why Conan O'Brien'stopped party guests calling 911' on Nick Reiner: Insiders reveal disturbing new details of final hours before Rob and Michele murders After 27 years as a TV anchor I was suddenly pulled off screens. My boss's explanation was a brutal lesson in loyalty Emily in Paris cast left'aghast' and'walking on eggshells' as off-camera drama becomes overwhelming... and whispers swirl about a CURSE Doctors said my hip pain was just tendinitis from sitting all day at work.


Adversarial Music: Real world Audio Adversary against Wake-word Detection System

Juncheng Li, Shuhui Qu, Xinjian Li, Joseph Szurley, J. Zico Kolter, Florian Metze

Neural Information Processing Systems

V oice Assistants (V As) such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant rely on wake-word detection to respond to people's commands, which could potentially be vulnerable to audio adversarial examples. In this work, we target our attack on the wake-word detection system, jamming the model with some inconspicuous background music to deactivate the V As while our audio adversary is present. We implemented an emulated wake-word detection system of Amazon Alexa based on recent publications.


GE Lighting's latest color LED smart bulb is unlike any I've ever seen

PCWorld

Vintage-style LED smart bulbs have been a thing for a while, but I haven't seen one quite like this new one from Savant's GE Lighting division. The all-new Cync Clear Full Color Direct Connect A19 Smart Bulb--now there's a mouthful--features a spiral LED filament in a clear glass globe. The Edison-style smart bulb can be programmed to glow from a palette of millions of colors as well as a variety of white color temperatures (from a warm candlelight-like 2,000 Kelvin to an energizingly cool 7,000K). You'll want to install the Cync Clear Full Direct Connect in a clear luminaire that will show off its spiral LED filament. The new bulb connects directly to your Wi-Fi network, and it supports Matter, rendering it compatible with Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings.


Adversarial Music: Real world Audio Adversary against Wake-word Detection System

Neural Information Processing Systems

Voice Assistants (VAs) such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant rely on wake-word detection to respond to people's commands, which could potentially be vulnerable to audio adversarial examples. In this work, we target our attack on the wake-word detection system. Our goal is to jam the model with some inconspicuous background music to deactivate the VAs while our audio adversary is present. We implemented an emulated wake-word detection system of Amazon Alexa based on recent publications. Then we computed our audio adversaries with consideration of expectation over transform and we implemented our audio adversary with a differentiable synthesizer.


Translation Tech Is Amazing, Except When It's Not

WIRED

Today's language translation apps are like self-driving cars: incredibly useful, promising, nearing maturity, and almost entirely powered by machines. It's astonishing that the technology even exists. Even so, machine translation is still clunky at times, if not awkward. Consider a recent conversation I had with my neighbor, Andre, who immigrated from Russia last year. Speaking little to no English, Andre is navigating the American Dream almost entirely through Google Translate, the most popular speech-to-speech translation app, first launched 10 years ago.


10 smart home devices that can make your life easier and save money

FOX News

Smart home tech can increase the value of your home. Installing smart home devices is an easy way to protect your property from significant damage, save on home insurance, and modernize your home. Most insurance agents recommend devices like smoke, CO2, or water sensors to offer enhanced peace of mind and protection for homeowners and provide savings opportunities. Protecting a property from potentially extensive damage means homeowners are less likely to need to file a claim, which may result in lower insurance premiums. Smart home technology can also increase a home's value as appraisers factor smart home systems into appraisals and homes with intelligent technology may sell faster and command higher prices.


New Jersey couple wake up to hour-long voicemail from 'unknown caller' - and are terrified to learn it was left by their Amazon Alexa

Daily Mail - Science & tech

A New Jersey couple woke up to a 67-minute-long voicemail from an'unknown caller' - and discovered it was left by their Amazon Alexa. 'I was checking the message ... and was like, wait, this is me talking in the bedroom,' she said. Alexa can call your smartphone if you trigger the'Find My Phone' feature, but a company spokesperson said the Amazon Echo doesn't record or store conversations unless it hears the'wake word,' prompting a light on the device to turn on to let you know it's listening. Amazon has come under fire for its devices recording conversations and faced two separate privacy violation lawsuits last year, including a claim that it had violated children's privacy rights by refusing to remove the recording history of minors. A judge ruled that the company had to pay out a collective 30.8 million for both violations. 'There wasn't a lot of talking in the message, mostly bleeping,' Creegan said, but added that she could hear snippets of her telling Alexa to'turn the lights off' adding that there was'two or three sentences of me talking to the dog.