Amazon May Introduce a Paid Version of Alexa in the Market by Next Year
Amazon’s plan to charge for its AI chatbot could come to fruition as early as next year. The company has talked about the need to monetize Alexa, which requires large investments and hardware to build these systems to run and manage AI applications.
The company is said to be planning to introduce a paid Alexa to consumers in June this year, but Amazon’s concerns have reportedly led to the release being pushed back to 2025. The company is expected to call it Alexa Plus, and it’s expected to work in a similar way to Microsoft’s ChatGPT Plus and Copilot Pro.
Amazon is offering people a more personalized AI product, but it certainly won’t be free. The company talked about its long game in the large language model (LLM) arena for years to come, which was previewed with Alexa giving more human-like answers. Remarkably, the push for AI is jumping from every corner, and companies are even tempted to go for a paid model using these consumer tools.
That makes sense when you’re targeting businesses that need more data resources and application support to run their business, but for the average user, these AI capabilities need to be developed and refined to even be considered for a paid model. Amazon showed off some of its paid services at the event, including emergency alerts through Echo speakers, but its purpose is still new to most people.
It’s likely that internal concerns will vary around these issues, and it’s likely that by next year, companies like Amazon will have a better handle on the industry and enough ammunition to compete with the best in the market.
Artificial intelligence is definitely the talk of the industry, and for better or worse, it will likely shape these companies for the foreseeable future.
