Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission.Learn more.

AI ‘Alexa Plus’ subscription won’t be a Prime freebie – report

In This Article

In This Article

New reports have added weight to speculation Amazon’s AI revamp of Alexa will be accompanied by a subscription fee.

According to a newCNBC report, if you want Alexa to hold the same sort of two-way conversations as you can achieve in thelatest version OpenAI’s GPT, you’re going to have to cough-up a few quid each month.

Sony’s awesome ZV-1F camera is near to its all-time low

Content creators behold this amazing deal on an awesome camera. The Sony ZX-1F is down to £449 from £549.

Citing “people with knowledge of Amazon’s plans”, the report says the new Alexa capacities will not be a perk for Prime members either. The report also says Amazon hasn’t decided how much it will cost yet.

As the report points out, Alexa hasn’t moved on that much since its inception in 2014 as part of the first Echo speaker. It’s amazing at being able to summon content, control smart home devices, set timers and answer questions and it has got better at handling follow-up questions in context during that time.

However, it does feel a little bit old hat compared to some of the recent advancements from OpenAI’s GPT-4o andGoogle Gemini.

In a letter to shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy recently said: “We’re building a substantial number of GenAI applications across every Amazon consumer business” which will lead to an “even more intelligent and capable Alexa.” The company wouldn’t be drawn further on the plans when approached by the media for comment today.

Apple is also currently facing the same problem and we’re expecting to see how the company is attempting toaddress the shortcomings of Siri with AI(perhaps with Google’s help) at WWDC 2024 in June.

We first heard of Amazon’s reported plans back in January this year, when a Business Insider piece tipped aJune 30 release for an Alexa Plusservice.

You might like…

You might like…

Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He’s based in South Florida, USA.  …

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.