{"id":1235286,"date":"2025-02-26T17:10:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T22:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1235286"},"modified":"2025-02-26T17:10:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T22:10:40","slug":"amazons-subscription-based-alexa-looks-highly-capable-and-questionable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1235286","title":{"rendered":"Amazon\u2019s subscription-based Alexa+ looks highly capable\u2014and questionable"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>NEW YORK\u2014After teasing it in <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2023\/09\/amazons-generative-ai-powered-alexa-is-as-big-a-privacy-red-flag-as-old-alexa\/\">September 2023<\/a> and reportedly <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2024\/01\/alexa-is-in-trouble-paid-for-alexa-gives-inaccurate-answers-in-early-demos\/\">suffering delays<\/a>, Amazon today announced that its more capable and conversational version of Alexa will start rolling out to US Prime members for free in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Those who aren&#8217;t Prime subscribers will be able to get Alexa+ for $20 a month. Amazon didn&#8217;t provide a specific release date but said availability would start with the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 smart displays.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon is hoping Alexa+ will be <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2023\/05\/as-alexa-flounders-amazon-hopes-homegrown-generative-ai-can-find-it-revenue\/\">a lifeline<\/a> for its fledgling voice assistant business that has failed to turn a profit. Alexa has reportedly cost Amazon <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2024\/07\/alexa-had-no-profit-timeline-cost-amazon-25-billion-in-4-years\/\">tens of billions of dollars<\/a> over the years. Although Alexa is on 600 million purchased devices, per remarks CEO Andy Jassy made at a press conference on Wednesday, it&#8217;s primarily used for simple tasks that don&#8217;t generate much money, like checking the weather. Exacerbating the problem, generative AI chatbots are a new, shinier approach to AI assistants that have quickly outperformed what people could do with today\u2019s Alexa.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/02\/amazons-subscription-based-alexa-looks-highly-capable-and-questionable\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/02\/amazons-subscription-based-alexa-looks-highly-capable-and-questionable\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK\u2014After teasing it in September 2023 and reportedly suffering delays, Amazon today announced that its more capable and conversational version of Alexa will start rolling out to US Prime members for free in the next few weeks. Those who &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1235286\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology","category-unfiltered-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1235286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1235286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1235286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1235286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}