Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.
I’m guessing Alexa is going to see a massive upgrade and use their llama model as it’s foundation, so the cost of running it is going to be a lot more.
I do agree it loses its novelty fairly quickly but that means people would be even less incentivized to buying a monthly subscription while also meaning the cost of running it would go lower as time goes on since people simply use it less.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they come out with an Alexa+ version and keep the other one free. I also can’t imagine the legal nightmare it would bring to tell people their devices are getting bricked if they dont pay monthly.