A couple of days ago, Microsoft launched Copilot Pro, a paid version of Copilot with additional features. Now, Amazon is also planning to take a similar approach with Alexa by launching a paid version of the service very soon. However, the company is facing a lot of obstacles in the journey. Here's the full story.
According to a new report from Business Insider, Amazon is developing an upgraded version of Alexa. The company internally calls the upcoming version of the virtual assistant ‘Remarkable Alexa’. For your reference, the brand internally calls the current version of the voice assistant Classic Alexa. Amazon is planning to launch Remarkable Alexa on 30 June 2024 as Alexa Plus. As the name suggests, Amazon intends to offer Alexa Plus on a paid subscription basis. In other words, Alexa Plus will arrive as a paid version of Alexa.
The paid version of Alexa isn’t performing well
Amazon is using a new large language model (LLM) for Alexa Plus, which it has codenamed Olympus. It has a new structure compared to the LLM that powers Alexa. With Olympus, Amazon is trying to make Remarkable Alexa more conversational and personalized than Classic Alexa. Unfortunately, in a preview offered to 15,000 people, Amazon found that while Alexa Plus was more conversational and personalized, it was occasionally deflecting answers and giving inaccurate information, and Amazon is not happy with that.
Amazon is trying to fix the issue by using new technologies
To address the issue, Amazon is planning on “completely revamping Alexa's technology stack.” While there’s very little information at the moment about what that means, Business Insider says that the company is facing issues in achieving the task as people who worked on Classic Alexa are reportedly trying to protect their work by insisting people working on Remarkable Alexa use what they had built for Alexa, which is “resulting in a more bloated technology stack while creating internal politics for the team.”
Performance issues could delay the launch of Alexa Plus
With all these issues, Amazon might have to delay the launch of Alexa Plus. A person familiar with the matter told Business Insider that if the paid version of Alexa fails to generate revenue, the company’s voice assistant business could be in trouble. So, if Amazon really wants this to work, it should sort out all the issues with Alexa Plus before bringing it to the market because what’s worse than delaying the launch of the product is launching a product that’s not polished and has issues with core functionalities.
