Amazon announced an update to its Alexa Plus assistant that will enable it to connect with a wider variety of smart home devices. The update, currently in preview, builds on the revamped AI assistant launched in February, which previously supported a limited set of third‑party services such as Ticketmaster, OpenTable, Uber, Thumbtack, Expedia, Yelp, Square and Angi. With the new integration, Alexa Plus can link to devices from Bosch, Delta, Ecovacs, iRobot, Yale Home, Whirlpool, Tapo, Eufy and other manufacturers. In a demonstration, a user asked Alexa to deep‑clean a child’s soccer jersey, and the assistant selected the appropriate washing‑machine cycle based on the garment’s care label. The capability relies on Amazon’s AI developer toolkit, which the company says is designed to simplify connections for device makers, including those with unique capabilities that were not previously supported. Amazon is adopting the Model Context Protocol, an open‑source standard that allows AI models to interact with external systems. This change is intended to make it easier for additional brands to create Alexa Plus integrations, and companies such as Canva, Headspace, Priceline, Lyft, Cengage, Virgin Atlantic and Weekend have announced plans to launch services later this year. Examples include Priceline’s ability for customers to browse hotels and book trips directly through Alexa Plus, and upcoming support for payments through Amazon Wallet for services such as Atom Tickets, Cengage, Fandango and Taskrabbit. The expansion of Alexa Plus’s functionality is expected to increase as more manufacturers adopt the MCP standard, though the timeline for broad availability remains unspecified.