Amazon is busy working on Alexa and is thinking about introducing a new paid subscription for the voice assistant. However, folks who know about this stuff have spilled the beans about issues within the company related to this new technology.
According to Business Insider, Amazon is cooking up something called "Alexa Plus," which is like a fancier version of the current Alexa we know. They say it's going to have all the cool stuff the current Alexa has, but the insiders spill the tea that it's also fixing a bunch of problems the current Alexa has.
In some documents shared by these people in the know, Alexa Plus is being advertised as a smarter and more chatty AI. They say it's set to hit the scene on June 30, and the company is test-driving it with around 15,000 outside customers.
But here's the scoop: Amazon is struggling to make the AI in Alexa better. It's giving out wrong info and not meeting the company's standards. And to top it off, they're trying to cut costs, which led to job cuts in the Alexa voice assistant team in November 2023. One insider even said, "If this doesn't bring in money, Alexa's in trouble."
Apparently, Amazon is also feeling the heat from competition with Apple's Siri and Google Assistant. Even though Alexa is the third-largest voice assistant in the U.S., Dave Limp, Amazon's bigwig in Devices and Services, said they might need to charge for new Alexa versions to cover the hefty costs.
Now, here's where it gets juicy. There's some internal drama about whether they should charge for the new Alexa. Some employees think it's a bad move, arguing that folks who are already shelling out for Amazon's services won't want to pay for a new Alexa.
And hold on, there's more drama. The new Alexa is not living up to expectations. In tests with those 15,000 customers, it goofed up, giving wrong info or rambling on unnecessarily. It couldn't handle tasks that needed multiple steps either.
Inside Amazon, there's a clash about the tech used in "Classic Alexa" and the "Remarkable Alexa." The Remarkable Alexa is the new tech they're trying out, while Classic Alexa is the one we're using now.
Insiders spilled the beans that Classic Alexa uses a natural language model that spreads out personalization signals and context history on different paths. On the other hand, Remarkable Alexa gives a fancier experience and better reasoning with its single-language model.
The word on the street is that Amazon is trying to patch up the issues with Remarkable Alexa by slapping on a new tech stack. But this move is also because Classic Alexa has some "legacy constraints."
Some Amazon employees want to stick with the tech used in Classic Alexa, but that's just adding fuel to the fire of conflicts within the company.
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