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.

Daniel Rausch, Amazon's vice president of Alexa and Echo, is in the midst of a major transition. More than a decade beyond the launch of Amazon's Alexa, he's been tasked with creating a new version of the marquee voice assistant, one that's powered by large language models. As he put it in my interview with him, this new assistant, dubbed Alexa, is "a complete rebuild of the architecture." How did his team approach Amazon's largest ever revamp of its voice assistant? They used AI to build AI, of course.

Google's AI-powered Photos upgrades are beginning to trickle in. Ask Photos, the Gemini-powered chatbot that lets you get ultra-specific and conversational with your photo searches, is launching in early access for select users in the US. In addition, the improved search for more descriptive Google Photos queries begins rolling out today for all English-speaking users. The upgraded search in Google Photos lets you use more descriptive queries. For example, while you could have searched for "lake" before, you can now enter "kayaking on a lake surrounded by mountains."

The Guardian's review of space exploration epic Starfield, Xbox's big game of the year, went live this morning – almost a week after other outlets published theirs. This is because Bethesda did not give our reviewer an advance copy, as publishers usually do. Along with several others, including the greatly respected games publications Eurogamer and Edge, we were left waiting until the game's early access release last Friday to play it. Bethesda's reasons for cherry-picking reviewers are known only to itself, but it's far from the only publisher to do this. Sometimes, controlling early reviews is a way to manipulate a game's Metacritic average in the crucial first week of release.

Following an early access period, Minecraft is now more broadly available on Chromebook. You can snap up Minecraft: Bedrock Edition from the Google Play Store for $20. Doing so will grant you access to the Android version of Minecraft, which typically costs $7, at no extra cost. If you have already bought the game on Android and use the same Google account on Chromebook, you can snag the latest port for $13. Mojang started offering this version on Chromebook in early access in March. At the time, it was only accessible on certain models that met the minimum specifications. Minecraft will work on any Chromebook from the last three years along with other models that meet the minimum specifications, according to Google.

It's the first official smartphone app for the chatbot, joining a crowded field of third-party mobile AI software which also taps into the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 APIs powering ChatGPT. It also allows switching between standard and GPT-4 language models for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, as well as conversation history (synced from your the desktop if you sign in with the same account) and the ability to export data and delete or rename conversations. It's only available in the US for now, but the company says it will expand to additional countries "in the coming weeks." At the same time, there are reports some tech companies are wary of staff using AI chatbots. In early April, The Economist Korea reported three Samsung employees shared confidential information with ChatGPT.)

Microsoft and Mojang are bringing Minecraft to Chromebooks, specifically the Bedrock Edition. Unfortunately, you'll need a rather modern Chromebook to play it, and what that means is going to baffle a number of frustrated parents. In a blog post, Mojang said that it doesn't have a release date for the full version of the Minecraft Bedrock Edition on ChromeOS, though the company plans to release updates as close to the timing of other platforms as possible. That means that the version for Chromebooks will include the Trails and Tails update, with its ability to ride camels and other features. Technically, what's being released is an "Early Access" edition.

The company confirmed OpenAI's chatbot tech was going to be integrated into both Bing and Edge at the Microsoft ChatGPT event in early February. Since then, the search engine has received more attention than it ever has. Microsoft has rolled out access to the new Bing with ChatGPT to a limited group of people. According to Microsoft corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, Yusuf Mehdi (opens in new tab), there are "multiple millions" on the waitlist. Because of that, folks will have to wait until they're granted access.

OpenAI, the San Francisco-based lab behind AI systems like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, today launched a new program to provide early-stage AI startups with capital and access to OpenAI tech and resources. Called Converge, the cohort will be financed by the OpenAI Startup Fund, OpenAI says. The $100 million entrepreneurial tranche was announced last May and was backed by Microsoft and other partners. The 10 or so founders chosen for Converge will receive $1 million each and admission to five weeks of office hours, workshops and events with OpenAI staff, as well as early access to OpenAI models and "programming tailored to AI companies." "We're excited to meet groups across all phases of the seed stage, from pre-idea solo founders to co-founding teams already working on a product," OpenAI writes in a blog post shared with TechCrunch ahead of today's announcement.

This week, Nvidia, a company best known for its high-powered graphic processing units (GPUs) debuted a platform for the development of AI-powered medical devices. The device, called Clara Holoscan MGX, provides computing power allowing medical sensors to process multiple data streams in parallel, train AI algorithms, and visualize biology in real time. Clara Holoscan MGX, debuted at the Nvidia's 2022 GTC conference, is an "open, scalable robotics platform," as CEO Jensen Huang put it in a keynote address. It's a hardware and software stack designed to help connect robotic medical devices or sensors, with AI applications. Take the process of endoscopy as an example.