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Amazon Mulls $5 to $10 monthly price tag for unprofitable Alexa service, AI revamp (www.reuters.com)

submitted 5 months ago by cloudless@lemmy.cafe to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

You're right that is a real loss. Really, an Alexa that didn't require a personalized amazon account could still be huge if they could figure out how not to have to justify the costs of running the servers. I think that unwillingness to let Alexa be just a voice assistant is the key roadblock. In a similar vein, Alexa for business could have been a really big deal too if they could have worked it out a bit faster but now I think interest has mostly died out before it had a chance to be adopted.

I'm not a huge fan of the company and I think it's a coin flip as to whether they would just completely screw it up, but I wonder what would have happened if someone like Crestron had taken a real interest instead of just half-assing an integration.