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Amazon is working on a new paid subscription plan for its Alexa voice assistant

Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. But the change is causing internal conflict and may lead to further delay.

Zworf ,

It should be a LOT better if they want to charge for it. I had an echo dot but gave it to a friend because it was really not worth the espionage.

I use HomePod Minis now. Same crappy performance but at least it doesn't spy on me quite as much.

ShaggySnacks ,

Does this subscription come with ads?

Edit: Added a link

megopie ,

Ok, but almost no one got this spywear because they wanted it, they got it because cousin Jerry who they only talk to once a year needed to get them something for Christmas and just went with the trendy tech thing, and it’s just been plugged in in the corner since 2014 siphoning personal data to the big cloud in the sky.

its_me_xiphos ,

"How much ya gunna pay for what you used to get for free..." Tom Petty, Last DJ. Underrated tune about the demise of free and independent radio and radio DJs.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

We've learned with assistants we mostly need them to... turn off the lights and play music. I don't want to have a conversation with my smart speaker, I don't care about it being hooked up to an LLM. As soon as I can't turn off the lights or play music it goes in the bin.

davehtaylor ,
@davehtaylor@beehaw.org avatar

This right here.

I do like being able to ask simple questions like, how many tablespoons in a cup, convert oz to mg, e.g. Which Alexa is generally quite good at. Siri is complete shit with that. You ask Siri (on a Homepod), and she'll tell you to open your phone to see the answer, more often than not. And it's extremely frustrating. Siri is very good about turning lights on and off and playing music (mostly). But I'm absolutely not shopping for things with Alexa or Siri, or adding things to grocery lists or shopping lists, or rating a purchase, or any of that shit. I'm not going to do anything with them that would make me spend money. They wanted to sell us a razor and then keep making money off the blades (by us buying shit through Alexa), and people just simply do not want to do that.

  • Play my music
  • Turn my smart devices on and off at a command, or with a schedule or routine
  • Convert units of measurement, or tell me what year the Spanish Inquisition started

That's it.

I already bought the fucking device. I already pay Amazon, what is it now, like $180/year for Prime? I'm not subscribing to Alexa. If it can't give that basic functionality for the price I've already paid, then it can definitely go straight in the fucking bin

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

If it can't give that basic functionality for the price I've already paid, then it can definitely go straight in the fucking bin

Don't throw it out... without first looking if you can flash a different firmware or somehow else reuse the hardware.

Zworf ,

Unfortunately echo dots are very hard to repurpose. I have tried.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

I see. There is some info from 2017 that looks promising, but seems like nobody had the proper incentive to fully root them... except maybe some Russian actors. Let's hope some "right to repair" gets to unlock them for legitimate owners too.

Zworf ,

That would be great. It's pretty amazing hardware. It was very heavily subsidized, I paid 20 bucks for them IIRC. I'm sure the BOM (bill of materials) alone would have been higher than that.

Zworf ,

I would actually. It's not even good at turning off the lights. Half the time it turns off the wrong light, starts playing music I don't want or other crap.

Having better recognition and the ability to actually answer a question I ask it, or to tell it to do things proactively would be amazing.

autotldr Bot ,

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.

Despite its early success in becoming a household name, Amazon's Alexa voice assistant has struggled to build a feasible business model, leading to major layoffs and cost cutting measures over the past year.

The new subscription plan, which will be backed by a superpowered version of Alexa, represents Amazon's latest attempt to revive the voice technology that was once considered the key to its future.

Amazon's former hardware and devices boss, Dave Limp, also said that the company will have to start charging for the more advanced version of Alexa at some point, given the high cost of running AI models.

A limited preview with 15,000 external customers discovered that while Remarkable Alexa is generally good at being conversational and informative, it is still deflecting answers, often giving unnecessarily long or inaccurate responses, the people said.

Last year, Amazon also created a new general artificial intelligence team that's working on its "most ambitious" and "most expansive" large language models, BI previously reported.

Saved 80% of original text.

Pons_Aelius ,

Giving something away for free then expecting to make people pay for it is always a winning strategy...

Dyskolos ,
@Dyskolos@lemmy.zip avatar

That's why i stopped using those at all. It's always the same.

But screw alexa. Why would i even want a bug sending my voice to some random server? And pay for it?
Wouldn't use that thing if they'd pay me....

THE_ANON ,

Oh you just remainded me bing does pay you for monitering your browsing activity

Dyskolos ,
@Dyskolos@lemmy.zip avatar

At least they don't try to make you pay for that :-)

THE_ANON ,

Major w in today's society 😂

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

It works sometimes, when the thing is genuinely useful.

Pons_Aelius ,

True but the problem is that they see 1,000,000s of people using the free version and think they are leaving money on the table by not charging and assume ~50% will happily pay for it when the conversion rate from free to paid is usually closer to 1% than it is to 50%.

FoxBJK ,
@FoxBJK@midwest.social avatar

Or addictive. The first hit’s always free! Get people hooked on Alexa and then tell them it actually costs $10/month to turn your lights off

lichtmetzger OP ,

Tentatively called "Alexa Plus," the paid version of Alexa is intended to offer more conversational and personalized AI technology, said one of the documents obtained by Business Insider.

But the quality of the new Alexa's answers is still falling short of expectations, often sharing inaccurate information, external tests have found.

Do they really expect people will pay for a large language model making up results on-the-fly?

"If this fails to get revenue, Alexa is in trouble," one of the people told BI.

I will not shed a tear when Alexa gets shut off, to be honest.

floofloof ,

Microsoft is expecting people to pay $20 US per user per month for their Copilot assistant in Windows. They're all going to crank up the prices for this dubious service.

its_me_xiphos ,

I got it. "Alexa, you owe me rent for being in my home. Alexa, send me 1500 a month in local currency."

Somewhere, a Jeff Bezos explodes.

hedge ,

Nice!👍

4am ,

Considering you can put your own on a raspberry pi for free and run it locally, there isn’t much reason for Alexa anymore anyway

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

You have a good project you like for that?

TheButtonJustSpins ,

Rhasspy. Takes a bit of setup, it's not as plug and play.

Lowbird ,

Maybe one day all the human Alexas can have their name back. That would be nice.

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