When Amazon unveiled its Alexa technology on the Echo back in 2014, customers were quick to adopt it, leading to an explosion of devices that offered the feature.
With its 10-year anniversary coming up soon, Amazon (AMZN) -) is considering some changes to the handy voice assistant — but one of them probably won't go over so well with its customers.
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During Amazon's devices event last week, the e-retailing giant's senior vice president of devices and services, Dave Limp, was asked whether Alexa's upcoming AI features will require a subscription. Limp said, "Yes, we absolutely think that."
No need to panic — just yet. Limp also said that Alexa would have to be "remarkable" before a monthly subscription price would be an option, and that the company plans to talk to customers and "learn from them what they believe the value is."
During the event, Amazon showed off generative-artificial-intelligence features in development for Alexa that include the ability to have an interactive conversation that includes Alexa's "opinions." Limp also mentioned that the goal was to turn Alexa from a voice assistant into "a generative-AI chatbot that can draft an email."
Echo users will be able to preview these new features in the coming months.
The talk of a subscription fee, along with the efforts to shovel as much AI into Alexa as it can hold, is likely a response to the struggles the Alexa division has had on the whole. Amazon lost $10 billion in 2022 on it alone, despite Alexa products being some of the company's best-selling items — but it's sold at cost, according to a Business Insider report.
Yet adding these AI features is also an expensive venture. On Sept. 25 Amazon announced an investment of $4 billion and minority ownership in Anthropic, an AI company that will help build AI into the next iteration of the digital assistant..
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