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 around $5 to access the higher version, according to people with knowledge direct from the company’s projects.
Known internally as “Banyan,” a reference to sprawling ficus trees, the project would represent the first major overhaul of the voice assistant since its introduction in 2014 with the Echo line of speakers. Amazon has dubbed the new voice assistant “remarkable Alexa,” the sources said.
The sources include eight current and former employees who worked on Alexa and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss confidential projects.
Amazon pushed workers toward the August deadline to prepare the new version of Alexa, three of the people said, noting that CEO Andy Jassy had a personal interest in seeing Alexa reinvigorated.
In a letter to shareholders in April, Jassy promised a “smarter, better Alexa,” without providing additional details.
The company’s plans for Alexa, including pricing and release dates, could be changed or canceled depending on the progress of Project Banyan, the sources warned.
“We have already integrated generative AI into various components of Alexa and are working hard on its implementation at scale – in more than half a billion Alexa-enabled ambient devices already in homes around the world – to enable an even more proactive, personal approach and reliable support for our customers,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement.
The service — which provides voice responses to user queries, like local weather, and can serve as a hub for controlling home appliances — was a pet project of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who envisioned technology that could emulate the fictional voice computer depicted on television. Star Trek series.
For Amazon, keeping pace with its competitors in generative AI is critical, as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI have attracted more favorable attention for their so-called chatbots, which can respond almost instantly in full sentences to questions. prompts or complex queries.
The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked an investment frenzy in AI companies and pushed chipmaker Nvidia ahead of Amazon and others in terms of market capitalization, briefly becoming the second most valuable company in the world.
Apple is also pursuing 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 worked on the project say Banyan represents a “desperate attempt” to revitalize the service, which never turned a profit and was caught flat-footed by the rise of competitive products of generative AI over the last 18 months.
These people said that senior management told them that this year was crucial for the service to finally demonstrate that it could generate meaningful sales for Amazon.
Accessible primarily through Amazon TVs and Echo speakers, Alexa is primarily popular for setting timers, quickly accessing the weather, playing songs, or answering simple questions.
Amazon’s hopes of boosting sales of its e-commerce business through the service have dashed, mainly because users like to see the products they are buying first so they can easily compare them.
The Seattle retailer cut thousands of jobs at its unit at the end of 2023, part of a major restructuring after a pandemic-fueled e-commerce wave petered out.
‘Must win’
With built-in AI, Amazon expects Alexa customers to ask it for shopping advice, like which gloves and hat to buy for a climbing trip, the sources said, similar to a text service on its website known as Rufus which Amazon rolled out earlier. This year.
Some said they were 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 closely associated with Amazon.
But an AI-based version of the service, introduced in September, has yet to be made public, while competitors have released several updates to their chatbots.
During the demonstration, Alexa lost her robotic tone and answered questions like the start time of a football game. “You can now have near-human conversations with Alexa,” promised Dave Limp, then head of hardware at Amazon, who has since left the company.
Amazon is working to replace what it internally calls “classic Alexa,” the current free version, with an AI-based version and yet another tier that uses more powerful AI software for queries and searches. more complex prompts that people would have to pay for. at least $5 a month to access it, some people said.
Amazon also considered a price of around $10 per month, they said.
There is no connection to Amazon’s $139-a-year Prime membership, the sources said.
As expected, the paid version could do more complex tasks like writing a brief email, sending it, and ordering dinner for delivery from Uber Eats, all from a single prompt, some people said . It could also eliminate the need to say “Alexa” repeatedly during a conversation with the software and offer more customization, they said.
But people said they struggled to understand why customers would be willing to pay for even an improved service that is offered for free today.
Amazon has also been plagued by false starts in AI development and other challenges such as hallucinations – when the software produces false or misleading information – and poor morale among the division’s employees.
Some of Amazon’s plans for the service have already been reported by Business Insider, including its struggles with the performance of the underlying AI and its hopes for a paid service. However, Reuters is the first to communicate on differentiated prices, internal delay and potential monthly fees.
Amazon also aims to boost home automation offered through Alexa, the sources said.
Alexa can now connect wirelessly to so-called smart devices so that they can be controlled by voice, for example allowing a user to turn on the porch lights every day at 8 p.m.
But Remarkable Alexa could learn from users in order to turn on the TV for a favorite weekly program or turn on a user’s coffee maker after a morning alarm goes off, which is possible today thanks to prompts that Amazon called Routines.