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Soon you might be paying a fee to use Amazon’s Alexa.Amazon is reportedly looking to release a new subscription-based version of Alexa this summer with generative AI support.“Alexa Plus” would offer more AI capabilities than the free version of the assistant, Business Insider reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The company has reportedly been working on testing the voice technology for the “Plus” version of the assistant with around 15,000 external customers; however, so far the quality of Alexa’s answers has fallen short of the team’s expectations. Specifically, the assistant gives unnecessarily long or inaccurate responses and struggles with tasks that require operating several services at once. For instance, turning the lights and music off at once.Amazon currently plans to launch the paid version of the assistant on June 30; however, if difficulties persist that date might get moved back.This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the possibility of a paid version of the virtual assistant. During an interview with Bloomberg in September, outgoing Amazon executive David Limp said the company was thinking about a subscription model for Alexa.
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“Before we would start charging customers for this — and I believe we will — it has to be remarkable. It has to prove the utility that you’re coming to expect from the ‘superhuman’ assistant,” Limp said at the time.Amazon has fallen behind competitors such as Google Assistant and Siri in recent years, so a paid upgraded version of the assistant could be a much-needed boost for the assistant.
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