Following reports that Amazon was having difficulty upgrading its voice assistant Alexa to a man-made intelligence (AI) chatbot, predictions were made that it will one way or the other announce a brand new product at its annual event in September. It’s reported that this features a plan to charge a monthly fee of 5 to 10 dollars (about 7,000 to 14,000 won).
Citing eight current and former Amazon employees, Reuters reported on the twenty first (local time) that Amazon plans to finish Alexa upgrades by August through a project code-named ‘Banyan.’
Based on this, the brand new AI voice assistant was named ‘Remarkable Alexa’. The prevailing version without AI functions is distinguished as ‘Classic Alexa’.
Amazon demonstrated a brand new Alexa equipped with AI chatbot functions at its annual event last September and announced that it will soon be released at no cost on devices distributed in the US.
Nonetheless, no Alexa AI chatbot version has appeared up to now. As an alternative, Fortune reported on the thirteenth, citing 12 former Amazon employees, that the corporate has repeatedly delayed the launch of its recent generative AI-based Alexa on account of structural dysfunction and technical problems.
This point was confirmed this time too. Particularly, Amazon reportedly wants its recent AI assistant to act as a type of agent.
This implies handling queries like writing and sending easy emails, ordering dinner, checking sports scores, and more, in addition to connecting wirelessly to home smart devices to show lights on or off, operate the TV or coffee pot. The reason is that because of this technology development has encountered difficulties.
It was also said that this upgrade means a “desperate situation” during which rival big tech firms corresponding to OpenAI, Google, and Apple are all entering the voice assistant field and must release the most effective voice assistant. The reason is that profit generation is at work here.
Amazon has been distributing Alexa through devices corresponding to Echo speakers and Amazon TV since 2014, but has never made direct profits. Nonetheless, a major sum of money has already been spent on developing the Large Language Model (LLM), which has been in progress for nearly a 12 months and a half. Meanwhile, Amazon has laid off hundreds of employees to chop costs.
For that reason, it is alleged that they’re considering a paid subscription plan of $5 or $10 per 30 days and are attempting to find out people’s willingness to pay.
“We’re already integrating generative AI into various components of Alexa to offer much more proactive and private support,” Amazon said in a press release from its spokesperson.
Reporter Lim Da-jun ydj@aitimes.com
