Amazon is working on a new paid subscription plan for its Alexa voice assistant

Technology@beehaw.org – 52 points – 9 months ago

Amazon is working on a new 'Remarkable Alexa' but internal politics and technical issues plague the project

Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. But the change is causing internal conflict and may lead to further delay.

You are viewing a single comment

View all comments

Tentatively called "Alexa Plus," the paid version of Alexa is intended to offer more conversational and personalized AI technology, said one of the documents obtained by Business Insider.

But the quality of the new Alexa's answers is still falling short of expectations, often sharing inaccurate information, external tests have found.

Do they really expect people will pay for a large language model making up results on-the-fly?

"If this fails to get revenue, Alexa is in trouble," one of the people told BI.

I will not shed a tear when Alexa gets shut off, to be honest.

Microsoft is expecting people to pay $20 US per user per month for their Copilot assistant in Windows. They're all going to crank up the prices for this dubious service.

I got it. "Alexa, you owe me rent for being in my home. Alexa, send me 1500 a month in local currency."

Somewhere, a Jeff Bezos explodes.