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Good morning. Tomorrow is Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in the UK, Canada, and Australia. My dad was an Air Force veteran. To him, and to everyone who served, thank you. Today: Week 5 of our AI tools series, Alexa+, and how one veteran used AI on a VA claim.
AI INSIGHT
Everything You Actually Need to Know About Alexa+
If you have Prime and an Echo, you may already be using Alexa+. Amazon enrolled Prime members automatically, and plenty of them hadn't asked. I have to say up front: I haven't used it. This one rests on what Amazon claims and what testers found.
Alexa+ is the old Alexa rebuilt on modern AI. It opened to everyone in the US in February, when Amazon said tens of millions had joined early access and were talking to it more than twice as much. We couldn't find a newer Alexa+ count.
The big number belongs to a different product. In May, Amazon merged Alexa+ and its Rufus shopping bot into Alexa for Shopping. CEO Andy Jassy says more than 400 million customers used it in the past year, and that US users spend 50% more per order. Last week, a small invited group started shopping with it by text.
Reviews are split. WIRED spent a month with it in a kitchen earlier this year and concluded it lacks basic reliability. Other users credit it with better conversation and smarter home control.
Next, Business Insider reports Amazon is building a project called Moonraker to handle several connected tasks from one request. Amazon hasn't announced it.
The verdict, secondhand: Free with Prime, it's worth an afternoon, and you can back out. At $19.99 a month on its own, I'd want a lot more proof.
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AI TUTORIAL
Alexa+, Feature by Feature, Plus How to Back Out
Here's what it costs, does, and asks of you.
What it costs
▸ US price: Free with Prime, unlimited for the household. Without Prime, $19.99 a month.
▸ Free chat: Anyone in the US can try a text-only version at alexa.com or in the Alexa app. Amazon doesn't publish the limit.
▸ Fire TV: Free on compatible US models, no Prime needed.
▸ Outside the US: Canada has the full version, free with Prime or C$27.99 a month. UK and Australia are in Early Access, with £19.99 and AU$29.99 planned without Prime.
What it does
▸ Where: Echo speakers and screens, the Alexa app, alexa.com, and some cars.
▸ Model: Amazon's Nova models and Anthropic's Claude. Amazon picks which one answers.
▸ Images: Yes. They save to an album in Amazon Photos, and deleting the chat doesn't delete the picture.
▸ Web: Draws on 200-plus news publishers. Amazon has said it can go to websites and complete tasks, but its feature list doesn't spell that out.
▸ Documents and email: Send it a file, photo, or email and ask about it. It can turn a photographed flyer into a calendar event.
▸ Partners: Uber, OpenTable, Grubhub, Ticketmaster, Thumbtack, and Suno for custom songs.
▸ Home: Builds routines by voice and summarizes Ring camera events.
▸ Extras: Custom AI podcasts on nearly any topic (US only), plus four personalities: Brief, Chill, Sweet, and Sassy.
Backing out and privacy
▸ Leave: On an Echo, say "Alexa, exit Alexa+."
▸ Your voice: Amazon ended the option that kept some Echo recordings off its cloud in March 2025.
▸ Change this first: In the Alexa app, open Alexa Privacy, then Manage Your Alexa Data. Turn off use of voice recordings, and pick "Don't save recordings" if you want them deleted. Menus move, so look for those words.
Pricing and features change fast in this industry. What's true this week might not be true next month. We'll do our best to keep these current, but always double-check before you commit to a subscription.
Try This With AI What it does: Gets Amazon's own assistant to tell you where it loses to the competition.
"Where do you fall short compared to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini? Be specific, and name three everyday tasks where one of them would do a better job than you."
Customize it: Name the one task you'd actually use it for. Copy and paste it into the chat at alexa.com or the Alexa app, or just ask your Echo. |
If it does not work: If you get a polished non-answer about how it's always learning, reply with: "That's not specific. Name one task and one competitor."
What this doesn't fix: Exiting Alexa+ changes your Echo. It doesn't remove the free chat from the app or alexa.com.
Go further: Week 1 of the series: ChatGPT ◆ Week 2: Claude
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NEWS YOU CAN USE
This Matters at Home
Short, practical summaries to help you stay updated on recent AI news and what it means for everyday life.
🩺 Health Plan Shoppers Are Asking AI. In an eHealth survey of its customers, 48% used AI to review plans, and two-thirds got wrong medical advice from AI. Read the plan documents yourself.
💳 Claude Will Now Read Your Bank Statements. Anthropic's Personal Finance beta connects accounts through Plaid to flag duplicate charges and creeping fees. It's read-only, and limited to paid US plans for now.
🛍️ Twice as Many Black Friday Shoppers Plan to Use AI. YouGov finds 34% of Black Friday shoppers are likely to use AI, up from 16%. Another 40% won't, so Thanksgiving dinner should stay lively.
💼 White-Collar Hiring Just Had a Surprise Comeback. Professional and business services added about 70,000 jobs in October. A Robert Half recruiter says employers now want people who work with AI and supply judgment.
🚗 AI Agents Booked Four Uber Rides in a Week. Four. During Halloween week, Uber and Uber Eats handled about 320 million trips and orders. AI agents booked four. The app takes about 50 seconds.
REAL WORLD
How We Used AI This Week
Real people, real uses, here’s how AI is quietly making life better, one small win at a time.
🎖️ Anonymous, from The Rundown AI, served in combat in Iraq and was rated 50% disabled by the VA, a number that didn't reflect the severity of the conditions. So ChatGPT got the medical records, the original claim, and public Board of Veterans' Appeals decisions in similar cases, with orders to find approval and denial patterns and rewrite the claim. The new rating: 100%. That's one veteran's result, not a promise. Veterans service organizations help with claims for free, and anyone charging to guarantee 100% is a red flag.
READER POLL
When you have a question, which AI do you open first?
TOOLS FOR YOU
📖 Tool Spotlight: Storyworth
Tomorrow is a good day to ask the veteran in your family what you've been meaning to ask. Storyworth sends one question a week for a year and binds the answers into a hardcover book, from $69. Storytellers can write, or call in from any phone, even a landline, and get it transcribed word for word. One honest note: the year can stall if nobody answers, so check in. Start here.
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