Amazon Plans To Give Alexa an AI Overhaul, Monthly Subscription Price

According to CNBC, Amazon plans to enhance its Alexa voice assistant with generative AI and introduce it to customers through a monthly subscription service. While the price point has yet to be determined, sources say it will not be included in the company's $139-per-year Prime offering. From the report: The team is now tasked with turning Alexa into a relevant device that holds up amid the new AI competition, and one that justifies the resources and headcount Amazon has dedicated to it. It has undergone a massive reorganization, with much of the team shifting to the artificial general intelligence, or AGI, team, according to the three sources. Others pointed to bloat within Alexa, a team of thousands of employees. As of 2023, Amazon said it had sold more than 500 million Alexa-enabled devices, giving the company a foothold with consumers. [...] One source estimated the cost of using generative AI in Alexa at 2 cents per query, and said a $20 price point was floated internally. Another suggested it would need to be in a single-digit dollar amount, which would undercut other subscription offerings. OpenAI's ChatGPT charges $20 per month for its advanced models. Still, they point to Alexa's installed user base, with devices in hundreds of millions of homes, as an opportunity. Those who worked on Alexa say the fact that it's already in people's living rooms and kitchens makes the stakes higher, and mistakes more costly if Alexa doesn't understand a command or provides unreliable information. [...] Amazon will use its own large language model, Titan, in the Alexa upgrade, according to a source.

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