Amazon Alexa AI To Revive Your Forgotten Echo Speakers: Is It Too Late Though?

Alexa might be getting AI powers soon! A big ‘Yay’ for all those having the almost defunct Echo smart speakers! But is it too late?

Back in 2016 when voice assistants were considered the next big thing, Amazon made an early mover’s advantage with Alexa – a personal voice assistant that was always available on a smart speaker near you. Despite Google aggressively pushing its Google Assistant via lakhs of Android smartphones, Alexa appealed to families, children and educators. It wasn’t trying to do everything – instead, it wanted to be a friendly neighbourhood voice assistant that played music for you, presented interactive digital games and read the latest news.

Coupled with Amazon’s Music service as well as superior integration with the Amazon shopping app and Prime Video, Alexa was good at what it was meant to be – an ever-helpful voice assistant. Later integration within the Amazon app as well as Fire Stick devices made it more useful for home usage purposes. 

However, the craze for futuristic voice assistants has died down and as the world transitions into a smarter generative AI era, Alexa seems inferior in comparison. What can Amazon do to save its Alexa ecosystem from dying a slow death?

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Breathing some Gen-AI into Alexa

In the modern world that we are witnessing, AI seems to be the solution to every concern. Hence, Amazon is now considering giving its Alexa voice assistant the power of generative AI. 

Based on a report from Reuters, Amazon is in talks with Anthropic to use the Claude AI model for powering the next version of its Alexa assistant. As with all generative AI models, Alexa 2.0 will be capable of handling multiple prompts, remembering your preferences and making decisions on your behalf. Hence, you will be able to have a human-like conversation with your Alexa speaker in the future and make requests in your natural way of speaking.

What remains to be seen is how Amazon differentiates Alexa 2.0 from other Gen-AI assistants like Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude. We would like to see Alexa gaining the ability to guess songs from humming and playing the same from Amazon Music. We would like to see Alexa being able to suggest the appropriate items while going grocery shopping on Amazon, repeat the last orders and a quick check on the stocks.

Alexa AI won’t be free though!

Since Amazon is relying on a deal with Anthropic, it will pass on the costs to the customers. Insiders suggest that Amazon might consider a subscription plan of USD 5 per month to gain the benefits of a smarter Alexa (USD 10 per month plans also in consideration). This could fetch Amazon a huge profit from the Alexa business and may even help it diversify its Echo smart speaker lineup.

That said, Amazon will keep the ‘classic’ Alexa free to use. The classic version of Alexa will continue to offer basic voice assists and everything else that the current Alexa does!

Will this save Alexa from a slow death?

It all depends on how Amazon positions its ‘Super Alexa’ in a market that is crowded with generative AI assistants. Alexa’s service has to be reliable, helpful, consistent and compatible with a wide ecosystem of its Echo products to make a dent in the segment. 

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