Amazon is planning a major overhaul of its decade-old Alexa service to include conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of about $5 to access the top version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company's plans.
Known internally as “Banyan,” a reference to sprawling ficus trees, the project would represent the first major overhaul of the voice assistant since it was introduced in 2014 alongside the Echo speaker line. Amazon has dubbed the new voice assistant “the remarkable Alexa,” the people said.
The sources include eight current and former employees who worked at Alexa and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss confidential projects.
Amazon has been pushing workers toward an August deadline to prepare the newest version of Alexa, three of the people said, noting that CEO Andy Jassy has taken a personal interest in seeing Alexa reinvigorated. In an April letter to shareholders, Jassy promised a “smarter and more capable Alexa,” without providing additional details.
The company's plans for Alexa, including pricing and release dates, could be altered or canceled depending on the progress of Project Banyan, the people warned.
“We've already built generative AI into different Alexa components and are hard at work on implementation at scale (in the more than half a million Alexa-enabled ambient devices already in homes around the world) to enable even more proactive, personal and trusted support for our customers,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement.
The service, which provides spoken responses to user queries such as the local weather and can serve as a hub for controlling home appliances, was a pet project of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who envisioned a technology that could emulate the fictional voice computer shown in the house. Star Trek television series.
For Amazon, keeping up with rivals in generative AI is critical, as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI have gained more favorable attention for their so-called chatbots that can almost instantly respond in full sentences to complicated questions or queries.
ChatGPT's launch in late 2022 sparked an investment frenzy in AI companies and has pushed chipmaker Nvidia above Amazon and others by market cap, briefly becoming the second most valuable company Of the world.
Apple is also moving forward with its own AI strategy, including updating its Siri voice-activated software built into iPhones to include more conversational responses.
Some of the Amazon employees who have worked on the project say Banyan represents a “desperate attempt” to revitalize the service, which has never turned a profit and was caught in the middle of the rise of generative AI products competitive during the last 18 months. These people said they have been told by senior management that this year is critical for the service to finally prove it can generate meaningful sales for Amazon.
Primarily accessed through Amazon TVs and Echo speaker devices, Alexa is popular primarily for setting timers, quickly accessing the weather, playing songs, or answering simple questions. Amazon's hopes of boosting sales in its e-commerce operation through the service have been dashed, especially as users like to see the products they're buying first so they can easily compare them.
The Seattle retailer cut thousands of jobs at the unit by the end of 2023 as part of a major restructuring after a pandemic-fueled e-commerce surge lost steam.
'MUST WIN'
With embedded artificial intelligence, Amazon expects Alexa customers to ask it for shopping advice like what gloves and hat to buy for a mountain climbing trip, the people said, similar to a text-based service in its website known as Rufus that Amazon launched earlier. this year.
Some said they have been told by senior management that 2024 represents a “must win” year for Alexa, which along with Prime membership and Kindle and Fire devices are the brands most associated with Amazon.
But an AI version of the service demonstrated in September has yet to be released to the wider public, while competitors have released several updates to their chatbots. In the demo, Alexa lost her robotic tone and answered questions like the start time of a soccer game. “Now you can have near-human conversations with Alexa,” promised Dave Limp, Amazon's head of hardware at the time, who has since left the company.
Amazon is working to replace what it refers to internally as “classic Alexa,” the current free version, with one powered by AI and another tier that uses more powerful AI software for more complicated queries and requests that people should pay. At least $5 a month for access, some people said. Amazon has also considered a price of about $10 a month, they said.
There is no tie-in to Amazon's $139-a-year Prime membership, the people said.
As expected, the paid version could perform more complicated tasks like composing a short email, sending it and ordering dinner for delivery to Uber Eats, all from a single message, some of the people said . It could also eliminate the need to repeatedly say “Alexa” during a conversation with the software and offer more customization, they said.
But people said they struggled to see why customers would be willing to pay for a service, even a revamped one, that is offered for free today.
Amazon has also suffered false starts in AI development and other challenges such as hallucinations, when software produces false or misleading information, and poor employee morale in the division.
Business Insider previously reported some of Amazon's plans for the service, including its struggles with the performance of the underlying AI and its hopes for a paid service, but Reuters is the first to report the tiered pricing , the internal term and the possible monthly fee.
Amazon also aims to increase the home automation offered through Alexa, the people said. Alexa can now connect wirelessly to so-called smart devices so they can be controlled by voice, allowing a user to, say, turn on the porch lights every day at 8 p.m.
But Remarkable Alexa could learn from users to turn on the TV for a favorite weekly show or turn on a user's coffee maker after the morning alarm goes off, which is possible today through prompts Amazon calls Routines .
Some people pointed out that for this service to work properly, customers will need to purchase additional Alexa-enabled devices.
The company had been working on devices in the past year to bring the service to more rooms in the house, such as Alexa-enabled home energy usage trackers and a carbon monoxide detector, people familiar with the matter previously told Reuters with the subject
© Thomson Reuters 2024
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