Amazon is reportedly on the cusp of releasing a new version of Alexa powered by generative AI and it’s going to be locked behind a paywall. You might be saying to yourself, “But isn’t the chatbot included when I buy Alexa hardware?” And the answer appears to be no.
So far, the leaks are suggesting that Amazon will use its own large language model to power the system. Internally, prices are being floated as high as $20 USD (roughly $27 CAD) and as low as single digits, to undercut OpenAI’s ChatGPT premium subscription of $20 USD. In 2023, Amazon showed off an AI-powered version of its chatbot that could answer multiple questions at once. It seemed very much like a smarter version of Alexa, or some would say, the original vision for the product that has yet to be fulfilled.
A report from CNBC states that Alexa received a special halo from Jeff Bezos due to his personal interest in the project, but since he’s stepped back from Amazon, there has been more pressure on the division to make money. Now with AI chatbots from Google and OpenAI potentially stealing all the spotlight, Amazon’s Alexa division has to make a move.
That being said, from my perspective, both Google and OpenAI might be taking headlines regarding AI, but the products they’re producing aren’t being adopted as fast as the original Alexa was, so I think we’re still pretty early in the AI race. There is a lot of ground to cover and playing it slow and safe might be the best course of action.
It’s expected that Apple is going to show off a suite of AI upgrades at WWDC, but I’m very skeptical that Siri will get a revamp. Apple seems more set on developing tools or features that leverage AI rather than an unpredictable chatbot. I think this is a smarter approach for now since chatbots can often get things wrong and Apple knows from experience that first impressions with big software changes matter.
However, I’ve not known Amazon to be as proactive as Apple so I do expect the company to awkwardly roll out a chatbot to millions of Alexa devices at some point. That said, I expect it to be pretty buggy at launch and rife with misinformation like the other chatbots, so maybe keeping it behind a paywall so only really keen early adopters use it might be a better strategy for avoiding AI-related scandals.
Source: CNBC
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