Amazon is updating its voice assistant, Alexa, with generative artificial intelligence and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to cover the costs of this technology, according to sources close to the company consulted by CNBC.
The subscription to this new version of Alexa will not be included in Amazon Prime, and Amazon has not yet determined the price, according to one of the sources. This new version of Alexa would be launched by the end of this year, positioning it better to compete with the new chatbots from Google and OpenAI.
Since its launch in 2014, Alexa has been a pioneer in voice tasks, but the advanced capabilities of recent developments in artificial intelligence have left Alexa outdated. For example, OpenAI recently introduced GPT-4o, a model that allows much deeper bidirectional conversations than Alexa and can translate in real time. In addition, Google also launched a generative AI-based voice feature for its Gemini system.
In September, David Limp, former Senior Vice President of Devices and Services at Amazon, told The Verge that the company was considering charging for a more powerful version of Alexa. Recent updates in the field of AI are being perceived as a threat to Alexa and Siri, Apple‘s voice assistant. Professor Scott Galloway from New York University recently described the updates as “killers of Alexa and Siri”.
The development of new AI chatbots has increased internal pressure at Amazon, especially in the Alexa division, which was previously one of founder Jeff Bezos’ favorites, to the point of allocating large budgetary amounts to the development of the voice assistant. However, this changed with the arrival in 2021 of Andy Jassy, the new CEO of the company, who restructured Amazon’s business during the pandemic and decreased the internal priority of Alexa.
According to a source, Jassy expressed frustration with the current limited capabilities of Alexa, such as the inability to provide live results for sports events, a simple task by internet standards. In the annual letter to shareholders, Jassy mentioned that Amazon is developing a “substantial number of generative AI applications”, including an even “smarter and more capable” Alexa.
