Amazon to introduce paid subscription plans for AI-powered Alexa features: Report

Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa was launched almost a decade back and has millions of users that use it for free across the globe. However, a report by CNBC has revealed that the company is now planning to charge a monthly subscription fee for some of its AI features. It is expected that the company will announce its more conversational version later this year so that it can compete with generative AI chatbots like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Notably, it is revealed that this subscription price will not be a part of Amazon’s Prime subscription which already gives access to Prime Video, Amazon Music and the shopping app. The price of the Alexa’s subscription plans is yet to be announced.

Amazon announced a few AI-powered features for its voice assistant earlier this year to make it more conversational.  Tech Today’s Aayush Ailawadi spoke to Rohit Prasad, an AI Scientist at Amazon who also happens to be the brain behind Alexa when these features were announced. Prasad stated that with the new AI updates, Alexa has become more conversational while still giving personalised responses. He told Tech Today, “We have taken a big step, which is to take generative AI and make it useful in homes through a personal AI that is there for you when you need it, and it recedes to the background when you don't. And it's happening because we are able to take the powers of generative AI large language models in general and combine it with the real-time devices and services to the scale that no one has done before.”

Prasad believes that making Alexa smarter is not enough, making it relatable is “super important” for the company.

The competition in the market has increased as OpenAI just recently announced a new free-of-cost AI model called ChatGPT 4o that is conversational and can give human-like responses. It can even translate conversations into different languages in real-time. NYU professor Scott Galloway called the updates the “Alexa and Siri killers” on his recent podcast, as several users use Alexa and Siri for basic tasks like setting timers or alarms and announcing the weather. A similar voice feature was also introduced by Google in its AI model Gemini recently.

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