Doubts swirl around Amazon’s plans for paid Alexa, report says

Would you pay extra for a revamped version of Alexa powered by the latest in generative AI technology?

That’s the question hovering over Amazon’s ambitious plans for a “remarkable” AI revamp of Alexa, which has yet to meet the company’s quality standards, according to a new report. 

Amazon made a splash last fall with its demo of a generative AI-powered version of Alexa, which can conduct smooth, open-ended conversations, write stories and invitations, respond to your emotions, and perform other impressive tasks, all thanks to Amazon’s new large language model. 

Shortly after the demo, Amazon’s outgoing hardware chief Dave Lamb told Bloomberg that the company could begin charging for a “remarkable” and “superhuman” version of Alexa, while the current version of Alexa would remain free. 

The key would be ensuring that this so-called “remarkable Alexa” would be worth paying for, and according to a new report from Business Insider, doubts are swirling within the company. 

While the “Alexa Plus” team has been eyeing a June 30 deadline for bringing the paid version of Alexa to market, that date might be pushed back as “the quality of the new Alexa’s answers is still falling short of expectations,” with the AI-enhanced Alexa “often sharing inaccurate information,” the Business Insider claims. 

Reached by TechHive, a rep for Amazon’s devices and services division declined to comment.

Amazon’s effort to launch a paid version of Alexa follows a turbulent time for the group, which has endured waves of layoffs as it struggles find ways to wring a profit from the voice assistant. 

Meanwhile, the “classic” version of Alexa has been stagnating and even putting some features behind a paywall, while users have grown tired of the Alexa’s often long-winded answers and tiresome “by the way” digressions. 

A new, generative AI-powered version of Alexa promises to solve those problems, as well as boost the assistant’s ability to perform tasks and control smart home devices with more natural-sounding language queries. 

But according to Business Insider, the new “remarkable Alexa” is “still deflecting answers” and “often giving unnecessarily long or inaccurate responses.” The new Alexa “also needs to improve its ability to answer ambiguous customer requests” when it comes to “the engagement of multiple services,” the report says. 

On a more fundamental level, some within Amazon are still doubtful “whether people will pay for Alexa or not,” regardless of any new AI-powered capabilities, Business Insider claims. 

In the meantime, Amazon’s competitors are aggressively moving forward with their generative AI plans.

Only yesterday, Samsung unveiled Galaxy AI, which will live alongside the legacy Bixby voice assistant on Samsung’s latest smartphones, while Google is busy teeing up Assistant with Bard.  

There’s also chatter that Apple could announce a generative AI-powered Siri as soon as this summer.