Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce company, will unveil its voice assistant 'Alexa' equipped with conversational artificial intelligence (AI) by the end of this year. Following OpenAI, Google, and Apple, Amazon's introduction of an AI voice assistant is expected to intensify the competition among big tech companies in the AI assistant market.
On the 22nd (local time), US economic broadcaster CNBC reported, citing sources, that Amazon is upgrading Alexa, which has been on the market for 10 years, to a generative AI and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the technology development costs.
According to the sources, Alexa equipped with conversational AI is expected to be released by the end of this year. It is known that Amazon will apply its self-developed large language model (LLM) called 'Titan' for this purpose. The monthly subscription fee will be charged separately from the annual Amazon Prime membership fee of $139. The exact amount has not yet been finalized.
CNBC pointed out, "Amazon surprised users by introducing the voice assistant Alexa in 2014, but with the recent AI boom, its functions have become outdated," adding, "While OpenAI has unveiled a chatbot capable of two-way conversations, Alexa is still widely used for functions such as kitchen timers and weather updates."
OpenAI, which led the ChatGPT craze, recently unveiled a new AI model called 'GPT-4o' that allows users to see, hear, and converse, and a day later, Google introduced 'Project Astra' with similar capabilities. Apple, which is pushing to embed AI functions in its devices, is expected to unveil Siri equipped with generative AI at the upcoming annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) next month.
There are internal questions about whether Alexa equipped with conversational AI can take the lead in this competition. According to sources, the department in charge of Alexa once received special attention and significant investment from founder Jeff Bezos and faced less pressure on profitability, but the situation changed when current CEO Andy Jassy took office in 2021. Jassy, a sports enthusiast, reportedly expressed frustration after asking Alexa for real-time sports scores but receiving answers that could be easily found through online searches.
In response to a request for comment on this matter, Amazon reportedly referred CNBC to the annual shareholder letter released last month. In the letter, CEO Jassy stated that Amazon is building generative AI applications across its consumer business, including a "smarter and more capable Alexa."
CNBC noted, "Amazon is fighting the perception that it is lagging behind in the AI sector," adding, "It does not have a leading LLM that can dominate OpenAI, Google, and Meta Platforms." The competition to secure talent against these companies, which are advancing in the AI race, is also cited as one of the challenges Amazon faces. The outlet added that founder Bezos has also expressed concerns about Amazon falling behind in the AI competition.
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