Amazon plans to deliver a newer, subscription-based version of Alexa with generative artificial intelligence capability for as much as $10 per month.
All of this was initially revealed by Reuters last May. Alexa will remain free for the basic version you have now, but the newly enhanced version will include conversational generative AI for a monthly cost.
Now According to the Wall Street Journal, sources believe the new Alexa with a monthly subscription might be available as early as this month.
According to reports, Amazon plans to introduce this new version of Alexa around August, but this is subject to change. This comes as Amazon begins to push out an enhanced version of Alexa on Fire TVs to help users search movies and TV episodes more easily.
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Amazon expects that putting its AI-enhanced Alexa – which could be branded “Alexa Plus” or “Remarkable Alexa” – behind a paywall will increase revenue, but the proposal is under intense scrutiny.
According to projections, Amazon would lose $10 billion from Alexa in 2022. As recently as November, Amazon slashed several hundred people from its Alexa section. In short, a smaller staff must manage more work in a shorter period of time.
Furthermore, asking existing users to start paying for the voice assistant may backfire.
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“[S]ome were questioning the entire premise of charging for Alexa,” according to a report from other Amazon employees earlier this year. “For example, people who already pay for an existing Amazon service, such as Amazon Music, might not be willing to pay additional money to get access to the newer version of Alexa.”
According to the study, 15,000 users have evaluated the new technology, and while it excels at human-like communication, it is “deflecting answers, often giving unnecessarily long or inaccurate responses.”
This comes after Amazon released an updated, more human-sounding version of Alexa in September. The enhancements are intended to bring the company’s voice assistant in line with modern artificial intelligence capabilities.
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