Amazon’s Alexa could get a smarter version to compete with ChatGPT

Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant could gain a smarter and more efficient version in conversations, with better fluidity and understanding of context in dialogues. But the new feature should require an additional monthly subscription from users, according to internal sources at the technology company told the American television channel CNBC, which published a report on the topic on Wednesday (22).

The goal is to put Alexa, which is built into smart speakers like Echo Dot and was launched in 2014, on the same level as rival products such as ChatGPT, from OpenAI, or Gemini, from Google. Thanks to generative artificial intelligence technology and broad language models (LLM), these robots are able to receive commands, understand contexts and generate content, making them suitable for interacting with the user. Amazon intends to use its own LLM, called Titan, to boost AI.

The plan is to charge users an additional monthly fee, says the CNBC channel. This subscription would not be included in the Prime plan, which gives access to streaming movies and TV, music, books and fast delivery services on the company’s website. The price has not yet been set by Amazon.

One of the reasons for the monthly subscription is to cover the costs of operating a “smarter Alexa”. This is because, for the service to run in the cloud, the company needs to install more data centers, use more graphics processing units (GPUs) and run the technology on more supercomputers — an operation that, at the moment, is more costly for technology companies . OpenAI, for example, charges US$20 (about R$100) per month to use ChatGPT’s cutting-edge features.

According to sources reported to CNBC, Alexa has always been a priority for Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon until 2021. Since then, the executive president has been Andy Jassy, ​​who cut costs at the company during the Covid pandemic and laid off thousands of employees, which led the company to deprioritize investments in Alexa.

Recently, Amazon invested US$2.75 billion in the startup Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees and considered one of the alternative names in the artificial intelligence market. The partnership aims to finance the startup’s operations, as well as share technology between the two companies, in a model similar to the cooperation between Microsoft and OpenAI.

Amazon did not comment on CNBC’s requests for response.

The discussion of a new Alexa takes place amid an artificial intelligence race among large technology companies. Threatened by the rise of OpenAI, whose ChatGPT gained a more efficient version last week, both Amazon’s solution and Apple’s Siri find themselves “dated” and useless compared to new services. Now, these companies are racing to improve their assistants.

Apple plans to introduce AI into the brand’s services and operating systems, including Siri itself, the brand’s voice assistant. The news should be announced at an event scheduled for June 10th.

ChatGPT suspends tool with voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson