Amazon plans to introduce a more conversational, artificial intelligence-powered version of its Alexa voice assistant later this year, and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the technology costs. CNBC reported Wednesday.
The e-commerce giant has not yet disclosed pricing for the new service, but people familiar with the company’s plans said Alexa subscriptions will not be included in the popular $139 annual Prime service, the report said. Stated.
Amazon declined to comment on the report.
In September, the company announced that it was working on an AI-powered version of Alexa as competition intensified from chatbots from OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
The company further reinforced this plan in its annual shareholder letter issued last month, saying it is building GenAI applications across its consumer businesses, including a more capable Alexa.
The company introduced Alexa in 2014 but has never found a consistent way to make money from it, instead directing shoppers to its website to buy more items.
Meanwhile, OpenAI announced a new AI model called GPT-4o last week. This allows users to talk to ChatGPT and get real-time responses without any delay. You can also suspend ChatGPT.
Last week, Google also unveiled an upgraded version of its Gemini chatbot and improvements to its search engine.
Apple is also planning an overhaul of the AI of its virtual assistant Siri, seen as another laggard in the AI race, according to media reports.
CNBC reports that Amazon plans to use its Titan large-scale language model to upgrade Alexa.
The company is betting big on AI, including a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, whose Claude chatbot competes with ChatGPT.
Still, investors worry that Microsoft’s early lead in the AI race through its investment in OpenAI could allow the company to steal most of the market share from cloud giant Amazon Web Services. are doing.
