Last week, Amazon's 2025 devices event debuted two new Echo smart speakers with Amazon's latest Alexa Plus (Alexa+) voice assistant. Now, Echo Show owners are reporting that its AI-powered updates brought with them a tidal wave of ads that make the device practically unusable.

Previously, Amazon's Echo Show smart displays showed ads mostly through the Shopping Lists feature or Alexa's "By the way" features. It also occasionally played audio ads when using Alexa to listen to Amazon Music. However, several reports on the Alexa subreddit and from The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who owns more than one Echo Show, found that the number of ads has skyrocketed in recent months.

Full-screen ads marked "sponsored" now pop up between photos in the Photo Frame mode slideshow as well as between

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