Amazon Mulls $5 to $10 monthly price tag for unprofitable Alexa service, AI revamp
reuters.com
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.
Between inserting ads into Amazon Video, scaling back on fast delivery, and this it looks like Amazon has maxed out their growth and are scaling back on their loss leaders that were used to get where they are.
For the first time in at least a decade of being a Prime member. I have set a reminder to cancel before it renews next time.
So many deliveries fail to be on time, I'm getting too many ads in my face when I use products I paid for (Fire TV auto-plays ads for content or cars or whatever now).
Don't set a reminder, just cancel now. If you cancel, you get the rest of the time you paid for and it just doesn't automatically review, so there's no penalty to canceling early versus right before the deadline.
Cancel now! It's incredibly convoluted process that makes you think you've done it but no, there's always one more confirm screen hiding behind a tiny button
Unfortunately, I’m still getting overnight and next day delivery on a lot of stuff, so I’m not giving Prime up. I did stop watching Prime Video already, since I’m not paying yet more.
Now I’m already way into the Apple ecosystem, so if Amazon insists that I give Apple yet more money for airpods, I’m ok with that
... and pushing ads on echo show devices.
Sadly, that's what we do with phones, cars, tvs, etc
I wouldn't be able to find a use for Alexa if they were paying me $10/month to use it.
I'd buy 2, start a neverending conversation going between them, and lock em away in the corner in the attic.
Make it three, call it The Ellipsis
Home Assistant will always be free.
Any recommendations for a voice tool? It felt like I would need to setup a room microphone on my orange pi when I was reading the docs.
It doesn’t help you if you need something right now, but Home Assistant is looking into building / engineering their own voice satellite device
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/06/12/roadmap-2024h1/
I haven't done it myself but it looks like you'll need some esphome devices like a speaker and a microphone
Is it able to use a LLM?
Yeah, you can plug it into a few external services like OpenAI or even use a local LLM like LocalAI. Not used either, but I know it's possible.
That’s good, because it’s dog shit.
Seeing as how I've never used it for free ...
I wouldn't put one of those amazon spy devices in my house even if they paid me. There's no way in hell I'm going to pay to use one.
Eh ... it's not spying. It can't even understand me when I'm talking to it.
But the one in your pocket is fine?
One of the reasons I use pixel phones, Google already knows everything, no point in Samsung knowing it too
If my Alexa stopped working because it needed a subscription it’s going straight in the trash.
Already there. Finally got fed up with the "by the way" trash prompts
Neat, lots more e-waste incoming
All the two alexas I own were given to me. Fuck no I am not paying $10 a month for a talking weather reporter.
This is going to flop.
A big appeal of assistant devices was the barrier to entry was extremely low. So low that they could be purchased in multiples and given as gifts and were easy for the recipients to set up and use. So low that Alexa integration was common on many types of devices at many pricepoints.
Setting one up and being asked to pay a monthly sub might not go so well. People are getting burnt out of constant subscriptions bleeding them dry. I really don't know how many would be willing to pay for something that was once free and was basically taken away from them.
this is also not including the growing amount of people that are goddamn sick and tired of hearing about AI constantly being shoved into everything
For me ….
On the one hand it worked. The cheap price introduced me to something I wouldn’t have bothered with. And the cheap price encouraged me to buy many. Now I count on it. But if it’s not cheap, I have no reason to pick that option
I never used to understand why Picard and the crew got upset with Data's long winded explanations until I got a Google Home. Now I understand very well.
"Data, stop. Data. Stop. Data, SHUT UP!"
People don't want that shit for free... Why would they pay for it.
Just slap more ads on it, I don't know haha
The New Siri seems to be quite useful, with "personal context" understanding my calendar, messages, mail etc.
ChatGPT 4 voice mode is very impressive, with the conversation getting clarifications and finding exactly the information I want (when it is not hallucinating). ChatGPT-4o will be amazing if it is as good as what we saw from the demo.
It is not for everyone, but I personally use AI chat every day and find it useful.
I bought the device (s), I use it to turn on/off my lights, ask it the time and date every now and then, everything it prompts me for is annoying as fuck. I'm not paying a monthly fee for a device that I purchased to do simple tasks that were included when I bought it.
Two things:
That's it.
Using free users to train the paid version and then flipping the switch on enshitification of the "free" tier to force need for premium.
People are missing the point. This was ALWAYS the plan. Get Alexa in hundreds of thousands of homes and get everyone to used to using it. Than charge money.
Even if only a quarter of the users pay, they'll make a ton of money.
I see you are using than when you should be using then.
I am quite interested in what Google and Apple will do about their voice assistant devices. The New Siri appears to be quite useful, if it can actually do what we saw in WWDC. But Apple hasn't mentioned anything about the HomePods.
Google Home/Nest has been stuck with the dumb version of Google Assistant, and has been getting worse. It has no integration with any other Google services, and there was no mention of Home/Nest in Google I/O.
If either HomePod or Nest gets released without requiring subscriptions, I might move away from Alexa devices.
Google has these phases for the products they develop, right now they're in the phase where they've functionally abandoned home and are giving it just enough support to try to get some other company to manage/fix it and let them profit off of it.
I'm not usually a fan of Apple, but they're probably going to be the ones defining where things go. If they want the market, it's basically up for grabs right now.
Yep, I’m already too far into the Apple cult, but if they release AirPod and AppleTV with in-device support for new Siri, I’ll be begging them to take my money
… and a Thread radio. I’m not sure what use Apple plans but I’m thrilled my phone has it and plan to get an iPad that has it
How long till there's a solid project to gut Alexa devices and run them from pis arduinos and pico's?
I've been wondering this. I have multiple of the older (non-Dot, the tall, cylindrical ones) Echoes. I hate using them. But I do like the form factor and sound quality.
It probably can't be too hard to gut everything but the speakers, microphone and DC port, then wire in a Pi / Pi Zero, right...?
I assume their motherboard is a write-off. The form factor in speaker are probably all we have to start with. For a few bucks you could turn it into a decent Bluetooth speaker. Want to get a little more intense if you want to do anything interesting like voice control.
I'd really like to find a way to drive the display and touch screen on the shows
I'd pay $20 or $30 a year, especially if it meant they'd actually, like, improve the service (which has been almost 100% the same for me for the last 4 years or so).
But $60 to $120 would make me move elsewhere
If you have an Amazon Echo (or whatever they call it) in your home, then you already pay them by letting it spy on you, your family, and any guests that come over. Even if they improved the service (they won't), why would you pay $20 or $30 a year for it?
What info are they getting from me telling it to turn on the lights?
The service it provides I would expect to either pay a reasonable marginal fee, or do everything locally.
If the Home Assistant voice Appliance stuff can get its shit together and I can get one for reasonable prices I will move to that (or something like it) instead.
“By the way, did you know…”
I had around 10 echos and replaced them all with HomePods. Much better.
Yeah, mighty tempting, especially since I wouldn’t need anywhere near that many. On the assumption the new improved Siri will need on device ai, I’ll go for it when they release that
I agree, although I haven't heard that for a year.
I have 10 rooms with voice assistants so I havent been motivated enough to suck it up and try to start replacing them with HomePods. I'm still hoping that a good, reasonably priced, fully local, HA-integrated solution (that I don't have to build myself) shows up.
Alexa was never supposed to make money by itself. It was supposed to do two things, collect information and lower the barrier to buying things.
They must have either collected enough data to lower the value of collecting any more, or they have realized that people got over the novelty of asking Alexa to order more dog food.
My guess is the latter, because buying anything from Amazon now requires 15 minutes of research to make sure it's actually what you want and not at some ridiculous marked up price. I wouldn't trust Alexa to pick the best result on the first try.
Alexa has a tendency to give you the 'featured' product no matter how precisely and specifically you ask her for something. Even if you don't have to research and know exactly what you want, it's almost always easier to just go find your phone.
The real game changer for Alexa was always having a voice assistant that you can integrate with just about whatever you want that isn't tied to someone's phone. The idea of going into someone's house and just saying 'Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights' or 'Alexa, is it cold outside?' is where the Alexa magic lies, but Amazon never could figure out how to make that profitable on it's own, just doesn't contribute to the business case.
They are so dumb. Every house could use their products, they just need to charge normal prices. Everyone has light switches in every room. Imagine if most new houses came with "Alexa" switches and electric plugs.
They tried to make money on a few hobbyists who could set it up for themselves. They needed to go after the construction market. Charge half of what they were charging and sell a ton to every house in America. It's not an iPhone. It's a basic device to turn on the lights.
You're right, but the reason that hasn't caught on is that talking to your "smart" house is stupid. You can't possibly program every possible command or situation, and telling Alexa to dim the lights in your kitchen to 40% is slower than using a dimmer switch. Actual smart homes are automated to the point where you don't need to talk to your room.
I’ve had a few Alexas over the past five years or so, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used any of them to actually buy anything. They’re all glorified Bluetooth speakers for my phone.
Alexa makes an excellent weatherperson :)
Trusting Alexa/Amazon is insane. It wasn't insane X years ago (your value of X will vary), but it definitely is insane now
This is just it, it can barely handle manage my lighting system. How am I going to trust it to make purchases? Brought to you by the same people who can't keep fake reviews off their platform.
As someone with ASD, GAD, and MDD (all diagnosed if it matters), smart home devices are an essential service to me. I can quickly set redundant reminders to help me with personal routines, add stuff to my shopping and to-do lists, and quickly get my lights and music set to what I need them to be when I am experiencing an anxiety episode. I definitely understand that my data is good and harvested at this point, and I don't trust them to have done anything good with it. But these dots have made my life work since I bought my first one, and they've significantly reduced the anxiety I used to be riddled with.