After a decade of free Alexa, Amazon now wants you to pay

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/27/amazon-ai-alexa-new-subscription/

by petethomas • 2 years ago

40 58 2 years ago

I wouldn’t use Alexa if Amazon paid me.

bhhaskin• 2 years ago

We only use Alexa to turn the lights on and off, set the thermostat temperature and tell us the weather. No way would we pay for that.

Loughla2• 2 years ago

It's my Pandora radio and a handy calculator for decimals and fractions when I'm doing woodworking. No way I'm paying for that.

bhelkey• 2 years ago

Amazon is planning to sell a paid subscription for an artificial intelligence-revamped version of Alexa
you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.

It seems as if the current experience will remain free and this an available upgrade.

kjsingh• 2 years ago

Caroline reported that you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.

uoaei2• 2 years ago

thank god, finally my relatives will uninstall it in their homes

melling2• 2 years ago

Nothing changes for them.

throwaway657656• 2 years ago

I never understood this sentiment given your relatives' smartphones also have microphones.

uoaei2• 2 years ago

The smartphones at least nominally do not have consent to freely listen and record. Alexa is different in that you have full awareness of its capabilities when you agree to use it.

cableshaft• 2 years ago

...for extra features. Its existing capabilities are still free (at least for now).

Considering I only ever use it as a timer, an impromptu alarm clock, and to ask what the time or temperature is when I'm about to head outside sometimes (can you believe there used to be a phone number you had to call to get that information if you didn't want to wait 7 minutes for the weather channel to do its forecast again?), I will just go without if they ever try to charge for that.

ceejayoz• 2 years ago

Its existing capabilities are still free (at least for now).

They've yanked at least one set of features, Alexa Guard. Its replacement, Alexa Emergency Assist, is the same thing but paid.

https://www.safewise.com/news/alexa-guard-no-longer-supporte...

Loughla2• 2 years ago

Weather: weather.gov, look up your location and bookmark it.

Weather alerts: NOAA Storm prediction center convective outlooks and bookmark it.

They're the best thing the government does in the US.

cbanek2• 2 years ago

And yet another way to try and destroy journalism: AI summaries of the news.

Why not just listen to the news? You can listen to BBC on Alexa, along with almost any other news radio station you please. If you want short summaries, just look at the AP.

AI summaries might not be correct or might miss out on important context: in the news, the details are everything. And I doubt Amazon will be paying for the news services they scrape.

Are AI summaries of news really that much better than just listening to the news? Does the AI part mean it's going to try and figure out what news stories I listen to? Or will it just be the same for everyone, and then you might just say Alexa give me the news, and you can program it to give you news summaries from a huge list of available sources, which are not AI generated.

This seems like a stupid product idea, akin to subscription mouse. And I actually like and use my Alexa devices quite a bit (nest thermostat, smart water heater, smart lights, timer, weather, use as a speaker for my laptop), so I think I'd be their target market.

hluska• 2 years ago

The word ‘news’ appears once in the entire article. Here is the usage:

“Among features of the subscription Alexa, expected in October, are recipe suggestions based on your family’s dietary restrictions and AI summaries of the news. Caroline reported that you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.”

You went on that entire rant and called an entire product stupid based off of that?

cbanek2• 2 years ago

AI summaries of the news being one of two features mentioned in the article, so I'd assume those are the newsworthy things. My point is that this functionality is already present on the device and works quite well without needing any AI buzz or subscription fees.

VirusNewbie• 2 years ago

I would pay if it worked well. But it seemed to have gotten worse over the last couple years.

TheCowboy• 2 years ago

I sometimes wonder if I'm just biased or if performance really did get worse. It would be cool to have an anonymous Alexa coder or someone who got the axe there chime in as sometimes happens.

But I think the main problem was their entire vision for monetization was just nonsensical according to what I read. So I think they wasted many hours of effort on that front instead of trying to make devices people found enjoyable to use or that actually delivered value by working well.

People don't really want to buy blind via a device if they don't have to, and if they did it would likely come at the substitution of buying directly from the site. They nixed their web interface, and the mobile app performed poorly. They invested talent in coming up with buttons to reorder very specific stuff like laundry detergent, but something like their "Subscribe & Save" seems like a more sensible approach to that problem.

stackskipton• 2 years ago

We used to buy from Alexa but when Amazon went to shit and we couldn't trust that "Order Tide Pods" would result in similar price/quantity Tide Pods showing up, we stopped doing that.

Plugins would have been great if plugin store didn't look like main Amazon store.

thomaskang08• 2 years ago

Most people in Alexa don't even believe in the monetization. We are actually building this thing and joking about it at the same time. You can imagine the quality is deteriorating because no one cares about the product anymore.

pnathan4• 2 years ago

Alexa is a wonderful idea in search of a serious use case.

It does timers, tells the weather, and, uh, shouts at me from Ring when someone is at the door.

Handy when cooking and I don't want to touch something.

The voice recognition is iffy, the misunderstanding is constant, the vocal command line is painful. The plugins don't work seamlessly at all.

But it's a good timer.

ravenstine• 2 years ago

It's kind of amazing how quickly it went from being a part of The Future TM to feeling like tech from the 1980s.

MR4D• 2 years ago

A great timer - especially in the kitchen!

But my iPhone does the same. And for $120 per year, that’s a good chunk of my iPhone cost every 4 years. E-waste, here we come!

weaksauce2• 2 years ago

a cool tip is that you can name your timers... hey siri set a timer named pasta for 10 minutes. or hey siri set a timer for pasta... "how long?"... 10 minutes

tzs• 2 years ago

It's also great for radio, if you have two Alexa device. I've got an Echo Dot connected via the line out to my 2012 Denon receiver, and when I'm not watching TV I leave the Denon on that input. The Dot has its microphone turned off so it can't hear commands.

I've also got an Echo Show in the same room with its microphone enabled. Then I can just ask Alexa to, for example, "on Dot, listen to classical KING FM, on Dot", and the Show will tell the Dot to start streaming that.

(I say "on Dot" at both the start and end because sometimes it wants it at the front and sometimes it wants it at the back, and I was never able to figure out what determined which it wanted at the moment).

Oh, and it is also a great way to get Spotify to play through my receiver. I can use the Spotify app on my phone or tablet or desktop to queue up things but tell the app to use Spotify Connect to tell the Dot to do the actual streaming of the music.

pnathan4• 2 years ago

Interesting.

I really invested heavily into the Alexa system. It is super cool and futureistic! I have dots, the wallplug, echo show, studio, etc.

I just wish Amazon had invested in the usability of it more!

melling2• 2 years ago

I play music on it every day. It’s connected to my Apple Music account

pnathan4• 2 years ago

I found that it only recognizes something like 30-50% of the bands/songs/composers I like.

really aggravating.

and last I checked, there was supported web ui or cli to play music from my other devices outside of the (horribly slow) Alexa app.

IT COULD BE SO MUCH BETTER.

fuzztester2• 2 years ago

aka a solution in search of a problem

fuzztester2• 2 years ago

aka a solution in search of a problem.

very common in our industry of software.

then the hypemeisters (vcs and marketers) pick up a likely candidate for hyping, and give it all the boost they can.

sometimes, by sheer luck, and of course by the old boys' network, it works.

I mean the profitability part, not the usefulness part.

llms are a case in point.

fullstop• 2 years ago

If Amazon had curated content I might actually consider ordering items through an echo device. As it is now, you have no idea if you're getting some keyboard smash brand.

It's AliExpress with slightly faster shipping now.

Regardless, I use it as a timer frequently, and it's fantastic in the kitchen. I make a lot of bread and it's nice to be able to set a timer when I have flour / dough on my hands.

steveBK123• 2 years ago

This is true of all voice assistants, you basically described my use of Siri. Timers, controlling lighting, stopping music music, weather queries.. Most other things are 100x faster to pick up your phone, tablet, laptop, whatever.

We are approaching 15 years of these things being mainstream and.. really that's it. Maybe that's fine.. it's just another mild lifestyle convenience!

But again, a reminder of the hype cycle and what actually ends up being useful technology when put in the hands of regular people.

ninetyninenine2• 2 years ago

Turning on and off all the lights. Light switches are obsolete in my house.

When I need to take a piss and it's pitch black I don't fumble for the switch when I get out of bed. I just tell alexa to turn on the lights.

henrikschroder• 2 years ago

Ok, cool, but would you pay a monthly subscription fee for the ability to talk out loud to get lights to turn on, instead of hitting the existing light switches?

Because that's what they're asking.

aeonik• 2 years ago

This works just until other people start sleeping in the same room, or if the Internet drops out.

jemmyw2• 2 years ago

Motion detector night lights. I've got a bunch of them. Softer light, no need to make a noise and wake anyone else up. One in the loo, one outside my room, one on the fridge, several down the hallway. They're on magnetic stickies so you can grab one if you need to go further. They do need charging but not very often.

pnathan4• 2 years ago

Yeah, I missed that bit.

I use the Philips Hue system, and it works super reliably. But the Amazon integration is... getting iffier with that. No idea why. But yeah, voice controlled lights are nice.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

Has someone tried to get ChatGPT working with Alexa?

baxtr• 2 years ago

amazon is great when it comes to operations. Delivering a broad range of goods cheaply, reliably and quickly to your doorsteps? Check.

Developing a great digital product? None has ever worked for them.

nilamo• 2 years ago

The kindle is pretty good.

metadat• 2 years ago

https://archive.today/TjAle

LegitShady2• 2 years ago

The only amazon device I own is a kindle and I still hate the idea that I can't know if its listening in, or trying to share my wifi with other devices through amazon sidewalk, or whatever.

They can charge as much or as little as they'd like for it. The idea of using such a service is repulsive, even for free. Amazon is the enemy, not your friend. Giving them more access to more of your life is a bad idea.

shiroiushi• 2 years ago

The basic idea of Alexa is great, the problem is, as you point out, it'd under the control of an untrustworthy company.

It's too bad we can't buy Alexa (/-like) devices that run auditable open-source code, and connect them to an open-source program running on our home servers. I'd be happy to have such a device/service, as long as it's under my control.

LegitShady2• 2 years ago

I don't know that there are any companies I'd trust to run alexa or an alexa like service. It's not like I trust google, microsoft, or apple more. I don't trust any of them.

relyks• 2 years ago

If you're able to have an actual conversation with it to clarify your intentions or for it to interpret more complex instructions, there is actually a lot of potential here

underseacables• 2 years ago

I use it as a reminder , timer, and my lights. That's all it's really good for, maybe a joke every now and then.

nharada• 2 years ago

Do they have their own LLM under the hood or are they using someone else's?

sys_64738• 2 years ago

I trust GOOG more than AMZN so I doubt I would pay ever.

adrr• 2 years ago

No one is going to pay unless its part of the prime membership. Put a decent CPU and memory into new devices and run it AI locally.

jccalhoun• 2 years ago

I have 4 Alexa devices. I use them every day as an alarm, a radio in the morning, timers, and to turn lights on and off, and make video calls to my parents.

Like most people when I got my first one I played around with some other things but quickly stopped bothering. I'm perfectly happy with them as they are and don't know what else I would use them for. In browser and on phone AI have already filled the need for AI that I have at the moment.

grugagag• 2 years ago

Amazon wants to squeeze you if possible, and probably change things around so you’re not happy anymore and sell you back the things you’re using today.

maxbond• 2 years ago

This is better than the usual story, where a company abandons a product and the units are sent to the landfill. Kudos to Amazon.

SebFender• 2 years ago

no.

kkfx• 2 years ago

Honestly I never feel the need to have high quality always on mic, or a macrobug (as opposite to classic spaying devices, payed by those who spy instead of me, and well hidden instead of being in plain sight)...

Sure, if we live in the house, not at a desk, might be nice to have some "audio-based UI" but it's far from being a normal case. While I work or anyway I'm at the desk I can see anything quicker, when I'm not I'm typically do something else so I've no need to ask for current weather or something like that.

On contrary I do like MUCH home automation, but on MY terms. I do not like much Home Assistant but that's the least unusable of all I've tried, and I do like to have for instance:

- auto close/open certain roller blinds following the Sun position and the home+outside temperature

- run or not run water heater depending on water temp, available p.v., others running/scheduled charge, next day weather forecast

- auto-closing main home water valve when I go out for more than one day, also auto-close inlet, open purge in case of food sensors alarm

- ...

Long story short SIMPLE things, but beyond Alexa capabilities anyway. And things that could be far easier if a concept of OPEN, STANDARD appliance exists instead of the current sorry state of IoT...

After a decade of free Alexa, Amazon now wants you to pay

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