Amazon Amazon is updating its decade-old Alexa voice assistant with generative artificial intelligence and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of the technology, according to people familiar with its plans.
The Seattle-based tech and retail giant will launch a more conversational version of Alexa later this year, potentially allowing it to better compete with new generative artificial intelligence from the likes of Google and OpenAI, according to two people familiar with the matter. Chatbot competition. One source said Amazon’s Alexa subscription will not be included in the $139-a-year Prime service, and Amazon has not yet determined a price point.
Amazon declined to comment on its plans for Alexa.
While Amazon wowed consumers with Alexa’s voice-driven tasks in 2014, its capabilities seem outdated amid recent leaps in artificial intelligence. Last week, OpenAI released GPT-4o, which has deeper two-way conversation capabilities than Alexa. For example, it can instantly translate conversations into different languages. Google has launched a similar artificial intelligence-generated speech feature for Gemini.
Some interpreted last week’s announcement as a threat to Alexa and Siri, Apple’s iPhone voice assistant feature. NYU professor Scott Galloway called these updates “Alexa and Siri killers” in his recent podcast. Many people use Alexa and Siri to perform basic tasks, such as setting timers or alarms and reporting the weather.
Sources say the development of new artificial intelligence chatbots in recent months has added to internal pressure on the unit, which was once considered a darling of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos but has fallen into disrepair since his departure. has always been subject to strict profit requirements.
Three former employees pointed to Bezos’s early obsession with Alexa, calling it the Amazon founder’s passion project. Bezos’ attention brought in more dollars and relieved the pressure to get those dollars back immediately.
That changed when Andy Jassy took over as chief executive in 2021, according to three sources. Jassy was responsible for right-sizing Amazon’s business during the pandemic, and Alexa was deprioritized internally, they said. Jassy is privately unsatisfied with Hyundai Alexa’s capabilities, according to people familiar with the matter. One source said the Alexa team was worried they had invented an expensive way to access alarm clocks, weather and play Spotify music.
For example, Jassy, an avid sports fan, asked the voice assistant for live scores from a recent game and openly expressed frustration that Alexa didn’t know the answer was easily found online, according to one person in the room.
When reached for comment, Amazon noted that the company annual shareholder letter Released last month. In it, Jassy mentioned that the company is “building a raft of GenAI applications for every consumer business on Amazon,” adding that these include “a smarter, more powerful Alexa.”
The team is now tasked with making Alexa a relevant device that can stand out in the new artificial intelligence competition and justify the resources and people Amazon has invested in it. According to three sources, the company has undergone a massive reorganization, with much of the team moving to its artificial general intelligence (AGI) team. Others point to the bloat within Alexa, a team of thousands of employees.
Amazon said it had sold more than 500 million Alexa-enabled devices as of 2023, giving the company a strong foothold among consumers.
Alexa, are you too early?
Apple, Amazon, and Google are the pioneers of voice assistants that do use artificial intelligence. But the current wave of advanced generative artificial intelligence can enable more creative, human interactions. Apple is expected to launch a more conversational Siri at its annual developer conference in June, according to the company. New York Times.
Those on the Alexa team describe it as a great idea, but one that may be premature and difficult to turn around.
Finding AI engineering talent also presents challenges because OpenAI, Microsoft and Google all recruit from the same academic and technical talent pool. Additionally, generative AI workloads are expensive due to the hardware and computing power required. One source estimated the cost of using generative AI in Alexa at 2 cents per query, and said the $20 price point was floating around internally. Another person said the amount would need to be in the single digits, which would undercut the price of other subscription products. The premium model of OpenAI’s ChatGPT costs $20 per month.
Still, they see Alexa’s installed base of devices in hundreds of millions of homes as an opportunity. Alexa’s developers say the fact that it’s already in people’s living rooms and kitchens makes the stakes higher, making mistakes more costly if Alexa doesn’t understand commands or provides unreliable information.
Amazon has struggled with the perception that it is lagging behind in artificial intelligence. While it offers a variety of AI models on AWS, it doesn’t have the leading large-scale language model to replace OpenAI, Google, or Meta. Amazon spent $2.75 billion to support artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, the company’s largest venture investment in 30 years. Google also has investments and partnerships with Anthropic.
Sources revealed that Amazon will use its own large language model Titan in the Alexa upgrade.
Bezos is among those who have expressed concern that Amazon is lagging behind in artificial intelligence, according to two sources familiar with him. CNBC reported last week that Bezos remains “actively involved” in Amazon’s artificial intelligence efforts and has been sending emails to Amazon executives asking why some artificial intelligence startups choose other cloud providers instead of AWS.
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