Amazon Plans to Unveil Upgraded AI-Powered Alexa, Potentially Restricted by Paywall
Allegedly, Amazon’s enhanced Alexa voice assistant may utilize the Titan LLM technology.
Amazon is said to be in the process of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities into its cloud-based voice assistant, Alexa. However, users may need to pay additional fees to access its enhanced services. The tech giant, headquartered in Seattle, has been strategizing to upgrade the capabilities of its virtual voice assistant since 2023, possibly to remain competitive with platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Nonetheless, a recent report indicates that while Alexa’s intelligence may advance, it will not be included in the standard Amazon Prime subscription package.
Amazon to make Alexa smarter
In its newsroom last month, Amazon shared a post titled “CEO Andy Jassy’s 2023 Letter to Shareholders,” outlining the tech giant’s vision for the upcoming financial year and strategies to maintain its competitive edge. The CEO mentioned in the post that the company was actively developing “an even smarter and more capable Alexa.”
It is speculated that Amazon may utilize its in-house Titan family of large language models (LLMs), which it has been refining for some time. Some of these AI models have been released with multimodal capabilities, making them well-suited for a service like Alexa. However, Amazon has chosen to keep the potential new features of Alexa confidential for the time being.
There are rumors circulating that Alexa might receive enhanced conversational abilities, potentially rivaling those of GPT-4o or Gemini 1.5 Pro. Additionally, it could improve its proficiency in managing complex tasks and comprehending commands expressed in contextual language.
AI-powered Alexa could require another subscription
Currently, the basic features of Alexa are freely accessible to everyone. However, certain premium functionalities may necessitate an Amazon Prime subscription (such as Prime Music, Prime Video, and others). Nonetheless, as per a CNBC report, the company is considering placing Alexa’s AI-powered capabilities behind an additional subscription.
According to sources familiar with the situation, the report stated that Amazon is not contemplating bundling the enhanced Alexa with the Prime subscription. The rationale behind this decision is the considerable expense of operating servers for AI computing. The report suggests that the tech giant may be spending approximately $0.02 (around Rs. 1.50) per query, which could accumulate rapidly. Consequently, an internal consideration of a monthly price point of $20 (approximately Rs. 1,770) has been mentioned. However, the company purportedly has not made any definitive decisions yet.
