Alexas upcoming generative AI upgrade might cost you $5 to $10 monthly

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Credit: Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

• A new report suggests Amazon might charge a monthly fee for an upgraded, generative AI-powered version of Alexa.
• Allegedly, this monthly charge could be $5 to $10, but there could be a less powerful version that stays free.
• Amazon considers the current Alexa unprofitable and is losing ground to Googles and Apples offerings.

This year, weve seen digital assistants get serious AI facelifts. Google is by far the most prominent, with its Gemini platform already poised to take over for Google Assistant. Meanwhile, at WWDC24, Apple showed off what a generative AI-powered version of Siri will be able to do later this year.

So far, the major digital assistant platform left out of this conversation is Amazons Alexa. Alexa hasnt had a good couple of years. Amazon considers the platform unprofitable because not enough people use it for what Amazon wants them to use it for, which is buying products on Amazon, naturally. Alexa also doesnt have the advantage of being baked into your smartphone since the one time Amazon tried to launch a phone was a crash-and-burn failure. This has all culminated with Amazon shrinking the Alexa team and focusing less on it.




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