Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.
Alexa was never supposed to make money by itself. It was supposed to do two things, collect information and lower the barrier to buying things.
They must have either collected enough data to lower the value of collecting any more, or they have realized that people got over the novelty of asking Alexa to order more dog food.
My guess is the latter, because buying anything from Amazon now requires 15 minutes of research to make sure it’s actually what you want and not at some ridiculous marked up price. I wouldn’t trust Alexa to pick the best result on the first try.
Alexa has a tendency to give you the ‘featured’ product no matter how precisely and specifically you ask her for something. Even if you don’t have to research and know exactly what you want, it’s almost always easier to just go find your phone.
The real game changer for Alexa was always having a voice assistant that you can integrate with just about whatever you want that isn’t tied to someone’s phone. The idea of going into someone’s house and just saying ‘Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights’ or ‘Alexa, is it cold outside?’ is where the Alexa magic lies, but Amazon never could figure out how to make that profitable on it’s own, just doesn’t contribute to the business case.
Amazon never could figure out how to make that profitable on it’s own
They are so dumb. Every house could use their products, they just need to charge normal prices. Everyone has light switches in every room. Imagine if most new houses came with “Alexa” switches and electric plugs.
They tried to make money on a few hobbyists who could set it up for themselves. They needed to go after the construction market. Charge half of what they were charging and sell a ton to every house in America. It’s not an iPhone. It’s a basic device to turn on the lights.
Imagine if most new houses came with “Alexa” switches and electric plugs.
Oh boy a bunch of added expense to get the light switches swapped out with ones that don’t spy on me.
You’re right that is a real loss. Really, an Alexa that didn’t require a personalized amazon account could still be huge if they could figure out how not to have to justify the costs of running the servers. I think that unwillingness to let Alexa be just a voice assistant is the key roadblock. In a similar vein, Alexa for business could have been a really big deal too if they could have worked it out a bit faster but now I think interest has mostly died out before it had a chance to be adopted.
I’m not a huge fan of the company and I think it’s a coin flip as to whether they would just completely screw it up, but I wonder what would have happened if someone like Crestron had taken a real interest instead of just half-assing an integration.
You’re right, but the reason that hasn’t caught on is that talking to your “smart” house is stupid. You can’t possibly program every possible command or situation, and telling Alexa to dim the lights in your kitchen to 40% is slower than using a dimmer switch. Actual smart homes are automated to the point where you don’t need to talk to your room.
This. Running Home Assistant on literally anything stronger than a raspberryPi means you can automate damn near anything. And yea, it might be a pain in the ass to setup, but once it’s done it basically runs itself.
And it’s infinitely, overwhelmingly better than than asking Google or Alexa to do any of it.
I have a bunch of wireless light switches all over the house, it’s stupidly convenient once you stop thinking they have to be stuck in thy wall.
Got a bunch of Google home minis I use for smart lights and music. Do you know if it’s possible to jailbreak/degoogle them to use with my own setup?
Jailbreak no, but you can sync them with home assistant and run them through thst as a bridge. Opens up a lot more flexibility in how you want to use it.
Is it much different from Google home? Seems similar from what I could tell from a quick glance.
Think of it like a connective layer. You will still need to run your Home stuff through Google to function best, but you can then have it forward its actions and commands to fake listening devices on your network, that can make it work with anything you like, or do more than that.
It’s powerful. I haven’t delved fully into it yet, but it’s also a great way to marry various smart home garbage together without being locked into a system. Use zigbee, z wave, matter, hue, and wifi blubs and devices all together seemlessly.
I wouldn’t trust Alexa
Trusting Alexa/Amazon is insane. It wasn’t insane X years ago (your value of X will vary), but it definitely is insane now
This is just it, it can barely handle manage my lighting system. How am I going to trust it to make purchases? Brought to you by the same people who can’t keep fake reviews off their platform.
Won’t keep fake reviews off their platform. It’s not a matter of ability, but of will.
So frustrating.
Can they prevent review fraud without requiring SSNs and background checks and more? (High-dollar item manufacturers could always pay randos to buy their items and leave 4-5 star reviews, right?)
Amazon could kill MRJHABCU and ANWKCB and PPQHZQS brands that give themselves 5000 positive reviews overnight… overnight.
But then the remaining products, wouldn’t they get review frauded real good?
It’s true you will never get rid of all of it but, just like crime, basic enforcement is a deterrence. They know who’s buying, they know where they’re shipped, they have a fair idea if they’re returned. Just requiring reviews to be from purchasers after they’ve received the product, removing positive reviews for returns without replacement (or flagging them as returned), and a few other steps would make fake reviews either very expensive or very expensive for the results.
The fact is, Amazon makes most of their money on AWS, and I don’t think they care to put in the real effort to make their marketplace trustworthy again. Without that, it will continue its downward spiral.
As someone with ASD, GAD, and MDD (all diagnosed if it matters), smart home devices are an essential service to me. I can quickly set redundant reminders to help me with personal routines, add stuff to my shopping and to-do lists, and quickly get my lights and music set to what I need them to be when I am experiencing an anxiety episode. I definitely understand that my data is good and harvested at this point, and I don’t trust them to have done anything good with it. But these dots have made my life work since I bought my first one, and they’ve significantly reduced the anxiety I used to be riddled with.
I’m glad these devices have proved useful for people like yourself, even at the expense of your data. you take the bad with the good, as they say.
I’ve had a few Alexas over the past five years or so, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever used any of them to actually buy anything. They’re all glorified Bluetooth speakers for my phone.
Alexa makes an excellent weatherperson :)
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Neat, lots more e-waste incoming
All the two alexas I own were given to me. Fuck no I am not paying $10 a month for a talking weather reporter.
If my Alexa stopped working because it needed a subscription it’s going straight in the trash.
Already there. Finally got fed up with the “by the way” trash prompts
With how garbage Alexa is now, there is no way in hell I’m paying them anything. I’d love a refund for the three useless dots I have now.
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Those are periods!
Sorry
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I wouldn’t be able to find a use for Alexa if they were paying me $10/month to use it.
I’d buy 2, start a neverending conversation going between them, and lock em away in the corner in the attic.
Make it three, call it The Ellipsis
Seeing as how I’ve never used it for free …
Two things:
- our alexa units are fine. We manage a half-dozen bulbs and a set-top box.
- if they want a subscription to keep doing that, HomeAssistant becomes the top job on the queue.
That’s it.
Between inserting ads into Amazon Video, scaling back on fast delivery, and this it looks like Amazon has maxed out their growth and are scaling back on their loss leaders that were used to get where they are.
For the first time in at least a decade of being a Prime member. I have set a reminder to cancel before it renews next time.
So many deliveries fail to be on time, I’m getting too many ads in my face when I use products I paid for (Fire TV auto-plays ads for content or cars or whatever now).
Don’t set a reminder, just cancel now. If you cancel, you get the rest of the time you paid for and it just doesn’t automatically review, so there’s no penalty to canceling early versus right before the deadline.
I’m not sure that’s true. There’s a pause option and a cancel option. It sounds like canceling ends your benefits immediately, and the pause leaves them. I want to cancel, but at the right time.
It’s absolutely true, my friend. Only takes a minute.
They just wanna scare you out of cancelling.
Well, I’ve set the reminder. There’s no urgency to cancel with 6 months left on the clock.
I’m not sure that’s true.
Well, I’m sure it’s true. I’ve started and stopped Prime benefits multiple times.
It’s true, I canceled mine last year. I also haven’t missed it, if I need things from Amazon I just have to spend over 35 for free shipping, and while it’s slower it really doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it might.
Unfortunately, I’m still getting overnight and next day delivery on a lot of stuff, so I’m not giving Prime up. I did stop watching Prime Video already, since I’m not paying yet more.
Now I’m already way into the Apple ecosystem, so if Amazon insists that I give Apple yet more money for airpods, I’m ok with that
I use the overnight and next day delivery a lot, but when it goes wrong it’s very frustrating, because there’s seemingly nowhere else to buy an 8TB HDD in-person. Fry’s closed down, Best Buy is garbage, etc.
We made this bed by giving Amazon all of our business and shutting down all their competitors. :-/
Cancel now! It’s incredibly convoluted process that makes you think you’ve done it but no, there’s always one more confirm screen hiding behind a tiny button
Last time I canceled it it was very easy to do (amazon.ca)
Nah, I’ve paid for it and it seems there’s no refund.
… and pushing ads on echo show devices.
People are missing the point. This was ALWAYS the plan. Get Alexa in hundreds of thousands of homes and get everyone to used to using it. Than charge money.
Even if only a quarter of the users pay, they’ll make a ton of money.
I see you are using than when you should be using then.
- Then is for time, similar to when. “Back then”
- Than is for comparisons. “I have more than you”
I mean, they accomplished the first part mostly because they are cheap connected speakers, but I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t absolutely loath their home assistants. Got rid of mine (Both Google and Amazon) not just because they are a privacy nightmare, but because they are completely fucking infuriating to work with.
The exact same phrase is never guaranteed to have the same results. The assistant hardly ever answers a question right. It routinely takes repeated attempts to get it to control any of my connected lights. It responds to people that weren’t talking to it. I could keep going…
If they tried charging me for it before I rage quit them, I would have just rage quit sooner.
I never used to understand why Picard and the crew got upset with Data’s long winded explanations until I got a Google Home. Now I understand very well.
“Data, stop. Data. Stop. Data, SHUT UP!”
Home Assistant will always be free.
Any recommendations for a voice tool? It felt like I would need to setup a room microphone on my orange pi when I was reading the docs.
It doesn’t help you if you need something right now, but Home Assistant is looking into building / engineering their own voice satellite device
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/06/12/roadmap-2024h1/
I haven’t done it myself but it looks like you’ll need some esphome devices like a speaker and a microphone
Is it able to use a LLM?
Yeah, you can plug it into a few external services like OpenAI or even use a local LLM like LocalAI. Not used either, but I know it’s possible.
That’s good, because it’s dog shit.
Skill issue
The models? The interface? Spinning your own? Home Assistant in general? What the fuck are you on about?
for 20 bones all in, it’s one of the most utilized pieces of technology i own, for doing the simplest of shit, it’s perfect
I’m still getting my feet wet with HAOS. Mainly got it for frigate but I’ve been trying to do more and more with it every week and I think I’m way over my head lol. It seems really cool if you know how to make everything work but I’m still trying to figure out so much I end up having to walk away and come back to it later after getting confused. It’s helped a bit to start writing out what I’m trying to do on paper and tinker with things while keeping notes.
Do you have a hook up on some free dog shit?!
Download the Alexa app and have at it.
LMAO, let me get this straight. You want me to pay for the privilege of being spied on. We really did jump timelines. Fuck all these greedy companies.
Sadly, that’s what we do with phones, cars, tvs, etc
Fortunately, there are solutions to each of those:
- phones - alternative Android ROMs and fdroid
- cars - remove the connectivity module
- TVs - don’t let it access your network and don’t use the apps
That’s not true for Alexa, you need to allow it to spy for its core functionality to work.
Yeap I’m just saying it’s sadly all too common
I’m actually degoogling at the moment precisely because of all this
I wouldn’t put one of those amazon spy devices in my house even if they paid me. There’s no way in hell I’m going to pay to use one.
Eh … it’s not spying. It can’t even understand me when I’m talking to it.
But the one in your pocket is fine?
One of the reasons I use pixel phones, Google already knows everything, no point in Samsung knowing it too
How long till there’s a solid project to gut Alexa devices and run them from pis arduinos and pico’s?
I’ve been wondering this. I have multiple of the older (non-Dot, the tall, cylindrical ones) Echoes. I hate using them. But I do like the form factor and sound quality.
It probably can’t be too hard to gut everything but the speakers, microphone and DC port, then wire in a Pi / Pi Zero, right…?
I assume their motherboard is a write-off. The form factor in speaker are probably all we have to start with. For a few bucks you could turn it into a decent Bluetooth speaker. Want to get a little more intense if you want to do anything interesting like voice control.
I’d really like to find a way to drive the display and touch screen on the shows
There’s projects that fully replace the Google Home Mini mobo. No reason you couldn’t do that with Alexa
Yeah that’s kind of the direction I was thinking. I really want to have access to the screen and the touch controls on the shows though. It’ll all come in time.
There’s another really wicked side project I saw running on pis. You put a Bluetooth enabled device in every room and it tracks where your items are. So you could ask where your keys aren’t to triangulate which room in your house they were in.
This is going to flop.
A big appeal of assistant devices was the barrier to entry was extremely low. So low that they could be purchased in multiples and given as gifts and were easy for the recipients to set up and use. So low that Alexa integration was common on many types of devices at many pricepoints.
Setting one up and being asked to pay a monthly sub might not go so well. People are getting burnt out of constant subscriptions bleeding them dry. I really don’t know how many would be willing to pay for something that was once free and was basically taken away from them.
this is also not including the growing amount of people that are goddamn sick and tired of hearing about AI constantly being shoved into everythingFor me ….
On the one hand it worked. The cheap price introduced me to something I wouldn’t have bothered with. And the cheap price encouraged me to buy many. Now I count on it. But if it’s not cheap, I have no reason to pick that option
