You might have asked Alexa to do plenty of dumb things over the years, but “figure out which of my washer’s 30 cycles actually means cold wash” might not have been one of them.
Turns out, Amazon just built the toolkit that makes exactly that possible, and it’s rolling out across a genuinely huge list of brands today.
Amazon’s launching a new AI-powered smart home developer toolkit that lets device makers plug their full feature set into Alexa+ instead of forcing you to dig through app menus yourself.
Amazon says customers who upgrade to Alexa+ already boost their smart home engagement by nearly 50% in the first month. This toolkit is clearly aimed at pushing that number higher.
The washer example above is real. Tell Alexa your kid’s soccer jersey needs a deep clean but only allows cold water, and it’ll pick the exact cycle for you. For now, devices from Bosch, Whirlpool, iRobot, Govee, Yale Home, and Eufy are supported.
Amazon’s also adopting the Model Context Protocol (MCP), letting brands bring their own MCP server so Alexa+ can inspect it and hand developers a ready-to-build integration path. Priceline, Lyft, Headspace, and Virgin Atlantic are among the first testing this (later in the year).
Pair that with the new Amazon Wallet, which lets you check out instantly using your saved Amazon payment method, and companies like Atom Tickets and Fandango are already building ticket-buying flows around it.
Everything here is still labeled Preview, so expect a slower public rollout than the announcement makes it sound. Amazon’s push toward MCP support puts Alexa+ in the same architectural camp as Anthropic and OpenAI’s agentic tooling, treating voice assistants as orchestration layers rather than standalone apps.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.
Nearly a month after announcing the GPT-6.1 Sol model, OpenAI unveiled GPT-6.1 Terra today. The latest addition to the family focuses on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and professional work, while costing 50% less through the API than GPT-5.6 Terra.
OpenAI says Terra can handle everything from filling out browser forms and working inside spreadsheets to interpreting technical drawings and editing videos. The company says it can also complete computer-based tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.