1y ago

Amazon plans to charge for Alexa in June—unless internal conflict delays revamp | Ars Technica

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Amazon plans to charge for Alexa in June—unless internal conflict delays revamp

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1y ago

Amazon plans to charge for Alexa in June–unless internal conflict delays revamp

arstechnica.com /gadgets/2024/01/alexa-is-in-trouble-paid-for-alexa-gives-inaccurate-answers-in-early-demos/

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1y ago

Amazon likely to start charging for Alexa

arstechnica.com /gadgets/2024/01/alexa-is-in-trouble-paid-for-alexa-gives-inaccurate-answers-in-early-demos/

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1y ago

Amazon plans to charge for Alexa in June—unless internal conflict delays revamp

arstechnica.com /gadgets/2024/01/alexa-is-in-trouble-paid-for-alexa-gives-inaccurate-answers-in-early-demos/

14 comments

This is a misleading headline. It's not talking about the existing Alexa products suddenly requiring a subscription for them to work, no the rumor is talking about a subscription for their upcoming higher tier Alexa Plus service with more advanced capabilities that's based on generative AI.
- Fuck subscriptions either way.
  Don't have an alexa and don't want one
  
  As long as processing is offloaded to the cloud, something's gotta pay for it, either a subscription or your personal data.
  Problem is, I don't trust Amazon to not double dip, so fuck 'em.
  We need offline personal assistants, support Home Assistant.
  
  I don't even have an Amazon account, I don't care what they want to do.
Amazon has to do something to turn Alexa into a viable revenue source
All of this type of language is so misleading, it absolutely does NOT have to turn into a revenue source - at a restaurant you might lose money on the steak plate, but you make 20x your cost of the salad plate AND THE RESTAURANT'S REVENUE ACCOUNTS FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING MENU COLLECTIVELY.
- Sorry, Snapz, we're discontinuing steaks to keep our restaurant stock value going up.
Canceled prime last week. So tired of things I pay for forcing ads that are irrelevant to my life and paying for the privilege to put more money in sone executives pocket. Up next am radio now behind a pay wall...pick a side advertise or Pau for something..
- AM radio paywall? Where?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A quote from an anonymous Amazon employee in a Wednesday Business Insider report paints a dire picture.
Amazon announced plans to drive usage and interest in Alexa by releasing a generative AI version that it said would one day require a subscription.
Amazon will be challenged to convince people to change how they use Alexa while suddenly paying a monthly rate to enable that unprecedented behavior.
Insider, citing an anonymous Amazon employee, reported that “some were questioning the entire premise of charging for Alexa.
According to the report, the Remarkable Alexa tech has been being demoed by 15,000 customers and currently succeeds in being conversational but is “deflecting answers, often giving unnecessarily long or inaccurate responses.”
According to the report, people working on the original Alexa insisted on using what they had already built for the standard voice assistant with the paid-for version, resulting in a bloated technology and “internal politics.”
The original article contains 484 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

14 comments