Visitors to Amazon Alex Boot during the International Electronics and IFA International Fair in Berlin on September 10, 2019.
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Amazon On Wednesday, he announced the long -awaited overhaul of his digital assistant Alex.
The renovated service, which Amazon calls “Alexa+”, is launching generative artificial intelligence, said Panos Panay, head of the company’s device, on stage at an event in New York.
The company has faced growing pressure to upgrade Alex since Openii published Chatgpt at the end of 2022, being users with its ability to perform complex functions such as writing fiction and encoding software. Suddenly, Alex and other voice assistants like that began to look obsolete, which made Amazon consider renovation.
“They recognize that they need to correct it and if they correct it, then we may talk less about Openi -Ui anthropic -u more than Alex Vs. Chatgpt,” said Tom Forte, an older internet analyst of consumer from Maxim Group.
Alexa subscription fee could help Amazon make up High Development Costs AIand make a digital assistant more profitable, he said Jitesh harvestedResearch manager monitors wearable and other devices on IDC. CNBC reported last May This Amazon was thinking of charging the monthly subscription for Alex as part of the pressure to make money from the service.
“You look at any generative AI system outside, and everyone has very high development costs,” he said.
Amazon will have to carefully walk with Alex paid to avoid alienation of the main subscribers, who are already paying $ 139 a year for fidelity membership, the harvest said.
The company will also have to show users “what this new Alexa can do” to justify the subscription, he added. Openai offers a free version of Chatgpt, as well as a premium subscription for $ 20 a month. The paid version of Claude Chatbot supported by Amazon costs $ 20 a month.
“Their audience is already very big, and even the transition of a small part of these users in the subscription could bring a fair amount of money,” he said.
Started in 2014, Alexa was an avid project for the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, who imagined that one day he could remind a omniscient computer like the one from “Star Trek”. Amazon established early lead in the voice software, and more than 500 million Alexa devices were sold globally, the company said 2023.
But Alexa was not as transformative as Bezos hoped. Most consumers use their digital assistants for “very simple tasks”, such as checking time or playing music, and primarily through smartphones, not smart speakers, according to Forrester Research.
Alexa also remains unprofitable. Amazon never charged the approach of Alex, but inserted into his line of smart speakers, tablets and other devices, which are notorious prices at prices or below the cost to make them. The company hoped that Alexa interactions would direct consumers according to spending money on their other products and services, but this failed to achieve.
Amazon lost tens of billions of dollars at work with devices, which includes echo, kindle, Fire TV and other products, Wall Street Journal reported last July.
After starting Chatgpt, Amazon started working to rearrange Alex by generative AI technology to make it more talkative and more useful. Company demonstrated the Alexa in 2023Although that new Alexa version, called “Let’s Chat”, did not start the public.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made a carefully propagated, or In some cases they abolishedSeveral unverified companies or money loss projects. This included the unit of the device and service, which houses Alex. The unit is subjected Two circles of release As part of a reduction in jobs throughout the company 2022 and 2023, in which more than 27,000 Amazon employees were released.
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