Technology

37735 readers

51 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

Amazon is working on a new paid subscription plan for its Alexa voice assistant (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 10 months ago by lichtmetzger@feddit.de to c/technology

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. But the change is causing internal conflict and may lead to further delay.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] lichtmetzger@feddit.de 23 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Tentatively called "Alexa Plus," the paid version of Alexa is intended to offer more conversational and personalized AI technology, said one of the documents obtained by Business Insider.

But the quality of the new Alexa's answers is still falling short of expectations, often sharing inaccurate information, external tests have found.

Do they really expect people will pay for a large language model making up results on-the-fly?

"If this fails to get revenue, Alexa is in trouble," one of the people told BI.

I will not shed a tear when Alexa gets shut off, to be honest.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 10 points 10 months ago

Microsoft is expecting people to pay $20 US per user per month for their Copilot assistant in Windows. They're all going to crank up the prices for this dubious service.

[–] its_me_xiphos 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I got it. "Alexa, you owe me rent for being in my home. Alexa, send me 1500 a month in local currency."

Somewhere, a Jeff Bezos explodes.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] 4am@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Considering you can put your own on a raspberry pi for free and run it locally, there isn’t much reason for Alexa anymore anyway

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You have a good project you like for that?

[–] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 2 points 10 months ago

Rhasspy. Takes a bit of setup, it's not as plug and play.

[–] Lowbird 3 points 10 months ago

Maybe one day all the human Alexas can have their name back. That would be nice.