Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Amazon wants you to start paying for Alexa

Used by over 75 million people AlexaBut by Amazon standards, the service is a A total failure. The problem is that Alexa doesn't make any money, and the service is a huge drain on the company's resources. Apparently, Amazon has one last plan to save its digital assistant Supercharges with AI And you're being charged for the privilege of using it—but things aren't looking good.

According to a report in Business Insider Thursday, the new Alexa didn't work in secret Hallucination AI and broken technology. This apparently fueled political tensions within the company, especially since many Amazon employees didn't believe people would be willing to pay.

The new service is tentatively called “Alexa Plus” and has a June 30 launch date, Business Insider reported. It looks like meeting the deadline will be difficult.

Amazon is testing a basic technology it's dubbed “Remarkable Alexa” with 15,000 customers (and if you're one of them, we'll love I want to talk to you about it). Employees who spoke to BI said tests showed that Alexa is great at meaningful conversations and terrible at doing anything useful.

The new Alexa gives very long and often imprecise responses, and more complex requests for multiple services are more difficult to handle (eg play “Siddha Android” and turn off the lights).

Beyond the classic failures of this generation of artificial intelligence, the new Alexa requires a massive shift in both the company's strategy and the technology behind the scenes. Some long-time Alexa workers aren't happy about this. According to BI, the team that created the original Alexa didn't want to give up their baby, and forced Amazon to maintain parts of the original tech stack, making the new remarkable Alexa bloated and difficult to operate.

There are people who aren't sold on the whole project. The number of services that Amazon wants to buy from your monthly bill keeps increasing. It's there Prime, of course, but Amazon also offers a variety of streaming services, Audible and more. Employees reportedly told BI that many don't think the company can convince its customers to pay more than what they already pay to use a smart speaker.

This seemingly doomed venture from scratch is a response to the growing pressure to make waves in the burgeoning AI business. Google, Apple and Amazon have all spent billions of dollars developing smart assistants, a technology considered the future of computing. Years later, the project failed to deliver any meaningful returns. Silicon Valley generally sees Alexa, Google AssistantAnd Siri Teams working on misinvestments and smart speakers have been particularly hard hit by layoffs and budget cuts in recent years. After making such a big deal about them, the tech industry doesn't want to let them go.

Interest in these assistants has now increased as a way for consumers to interface with next-generation AI. Amazon and Apple Especially after they lose the game in that arena Google, Microsoft and OpenAI AI has run away with the hype cycle. Amazon built its own AI models to compete with the ChatGPTs of the world, The company calls KAnd so is the report More ambitious models in development.

Adding AI to digital assistants is a no-brainer, and if Amazon can pull it off in a way that makes Alexa a moneymaker, it could solve a lot of big headaches. If the plan doesn't work, it could bring Alexa one step closer to the grave.

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