Amazon Could Charge Up to $10/Month for Alexa

[sKurt]

My Mach E has Alexa built-in, it's a $15 monthly fee if you activate it. yeah, it's not getting activated ever.

If my Echo needs a fee for me to tell it to play the Prime Music or to turn on the pizza timer, that's going in the trash...

 

[peejer]

I'll wait and see what the free service provides in the update, but if it sucks. I'll be buying homepod minis.

 

[iBreatheApple]

Alexa will go in the bin before I pay for it

Came to say this myself. And that’s no empty threat. I’ve been wanting to ditch it anyway but, fortunately for them, Siri is such a joke that I’ve kept Alexa around. The good news is we have Apple intelligence now — oh wait it’s not available on the brand new HomePods.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

lol, why would anyone in their right mind pay a sub for Alexa? When it's been free this whole time. That's like Youtube fighting people not wanting to pay for premium when it's been free for most of it's existence. Except far less people care about Alexa.

 

[bigheaddoug]

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Heheheheheheheheheheh
<snicker>
<snort>
<sigh>
heh
no

 

[cardfan]

Wouldn’t pay for any of the chatbots being developed

 

[quietstormSD]

All this AI ******** is just a hype train money grab. Alexa is great right now as it is. Their "AI" version whatever the **** that is, should be free for those that subscribe to Amazon Prime since their whole 2-day shipping is pretty much crap now.

 

[KevinC]

I will continue to pay exactly $0 for Alexa, or I'm kicking her out of the house like a fat lazy girlfriend with a bad attitude.

 

[return2sendai]

lmaooooooooooooo the logical end point to this subscription obsession is that you will eventually have to pay a monthly subscription to ward off Boston dynamics dogs from ripping out your throat.

£10 a month for something I make set a cooking timer for me occasionally? It's cheaper to just throw the thing out the window.

Make sure you open the window first.

 

[return2sendai]

😂

So for a ton of AI companies there is no ROI without turning to a subscription model (or being acquired, which is what most start ups in this space are banking on).

This bubble is going to burst, and burst big.

ROI ? What does the Republic Of Ireland have to do with Alexa?

 

[cardfan]

The vast majority of them…don’t.

We’re in a bubble. You can launch a company as a SPAC (read: modern day fraud), spend a **** ton of money, and then go bankrupt, or you get acquired.

To date, no company has found a way to monetize AI services in a way that comes even remotely close to the capital expenditures they’ve pumped in.

This entire field is going to collapse soon (1-2 years), leaving only the Meta’s, Microsoft’s, and openAI remaining because they are too big to fail. The bubble burst is going to destroy tons of retirement accounts though! So that’s…something?

Pretty much. Nvidia sure is selling a ton of chips though. Wait til it dries up and most companies figure out they’re not making more money buying the hype.

 

[leftyMac]

“Alexa, how much is the cheapest HomePod mini?”

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

If they charge to use it or have a free ad-tier, I'm trashing all of them and getting HomePod minis. Hopefully we'll get revamped HomePods that could take advantage of AI in the future. 8 GB RAM seems like a lot though for a HomePod. Maybe they'll allow it to be done off-device.

8GB RAM shouldn't seem like a lot for anything these days, the chips are small, and cost a tiny amount to produce. The only reason it seems like a lot, is because Apple ruins it by using RAM as an upsell profit source. And then all the other companies jump on board this little rort, and do the same thing. Super annoying if you're a user with large RAM needs.

 

[Piggie]

To be completely honest, I could 100% see people willing to pay monthly for AI assistant speakers, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple Homepods.
But....... (and here is the key to making it work)
Only if and when they actually crack genuine conversational AI.

To have an AI system you can talk to, ask it to remember things, remind you of things, and find out things for you.
AND be able to actually talk with it about any subject in a way similar to another human.
I could 100% accept this would be a massive game changer, and one may would be willing to pay for.

We are of course nowhere near that yet, but I see no reason to suggest we'll never get there.
It may be 5 , 10 or 50 years from now, but unless we hit a dead end with AI it will happen.

 

[noiceT]

As long as I can still tell it to play music or to turn on / off my lights I don’t care. This is the only thing I use those assistants for. I am way too lazy to talk

This is definitely something companies didn't realize in modern-day, Millenial/GenZ real world use. Talking is tiring as hell.

 

[blodyholy]

I have one of their Echo Dots; 4th gen. The only thing I use it for is a Bluetooth “DAC” for a pair of wired headphones via the built in 3.5mm jack. I knew this day was coming, which is why I’m holding on to this one. At least, unti they remotely disable/charge for that functionality.

 

[CheffyDude]

The day that Amazon begins this is the day every Amazon device is removed from my home. eBay will be inundated.

 

[Manzanito]

Hard pass.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

Blanking duplicate post.

 

[StanleyOmar]

Sounds like an incredible amount of confidence in people's willingness to pay a subscription for what to most is just a fancy remote control.

 

[switcher3365]

Add that Todoist will no longer work with Alexa on July 1 due to Amazon removing access to the API it was using... I don’t have much an incentive to pay for this enhanced Alexa.

 

[lanomds1]

Welcome to capitalism folks.
Yeah, I know, it sucks.

 

[MagicBoy]

Amazon had better tell me where to return my Alexa devices to at their cost for recycling then.

 

[Infinity Vortex]

My Mach E has Alexa built-in, it's a $15 monthly fee if you activate it. yeah, it's not getting activated ever.

If my Echo needs a fee for me to tell it to play the Prime Music or to turn on the pizza timer, that's going in the trash...

I wouldn’t either. What a rip off.

 

[RogueWarrior65]

I will be unplugging them if they do this.