Amazon is planning to revamp its Alexa voice assistant, but the changes will come at a price for consumers, as the online retail giant aims to launch a paid subscription for the revamped Alexa this summer, prompting concern among some company employees. according to a recent report from Business Insider.
Insider reveals that the paid subscription for the revamped Alexa is called Alexa Plus, and Amazon plans to introduce it to consumers on June 30 for a currently unknown price. The new version of Alexa will include improved ai technology that will make the voice assistant more conversational and intelligent, and Amazon is calling the project Remarkable Alexa.
Related: Amazon is making a major change to Alexa that you might not like
The company teased the changes to Alexa in an announcement in September last year where it revealed that it plans to give the voice assistant more personality and allow it to have “a point of view, making conversations more engaging.”
“We've been on that journey to create that superhuman assistant for more than a decade,” said Dave Limp, then senior vice president of devices at Amazon, at a conference in September. ai–technology/”>event from Amazon's HQ2 headquarters. “But with generative ai, it's now within our reach.”
That same month, Limp also confirmed in a interview with Bloomberg that because the cost of training the “superhuman” Alexa is “substantial,” the company will charge customers for the improved service, but at a price that customers say they are comfortable with.
“We don't have an idea of the price yet,” Limp said while speaking to Bloomberg. “We will talk to customers and learn from them what they think the value is. The Alexa you know and love today will remain free.”
While Amazon is ramping up its efforts to develop Remarkable Alexa, Insider also revealed in its report that the creation of the updated voice assistant has allegedly caused internal conflict within the company.
The notable Alexa is currently being tested on 15,000 customers, and while the voice assistant is more conversational and smarter, it has been “drifting” answers, giving “unnecessarily long or inaccurate answers” to questions, and struggling to answer “ambiguous requests.” of customers”.
Some Amazon employees are reportedly wondering whether or not consumers would pay for Remarkable Alexa while they are already paying for additional Amazon services.
The notable Alexa appears to be Amazon's effort to revive the voice assistant after its demise reported In 2022, Alexa and other Amazon devices would lose $10 billion that year. One company employee even called Alexa a “colossal failure.” As a result of the voice assistant failure, the unit responsible for the development of Alexa was subject to one of the largest layoffs in the company's history: around 10,000 employees lost their jobs.
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