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Amazon Mulls $5 to $10 monthly price tag for unprofitable Alexa service, AI revamp

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.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

How long till there’s a solid project to gut Alexa devices and run them from pis arduinos and pico’s?

smiletolerantly ,

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…?

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

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

Drewelite ,

There’s projects that fully replace the Google Home Mini mobo. No reason you couldn’t do that with Alexa

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

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.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

I’d pay $20 or $30 a year, especially if it meant they’d actually, like, improve the service (which has been almost 100% the same for me for the last 4 years or so).

But $60 to $120 would make me move elsewhere

GooseFinger ,

If you have an Amazon Echo (or whatever they call it) in your home, then you already pay them by letting it spy on you, your family, and any guests that come over. Even if they improved the service (they won’t), why would you pay $20 or $30 a year for it?

ripcord , (edited )
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

What info are they getting from me telling it to turn on the lights?

The service it provides I would expect to either pay a reasonable marginal fee, or do everything locally.

If the Home Assistant voice Appliance stuff can get its shit together and I can get one for reasonable prices I will move to that (or something like it) instead.

Dudewitbow ,

it really depends on how much you trust amazon on what it records as alexa is an always on(in terms of microphone) device.

conciselyverbose ,

It shouldn’t take a subscription to manage turning on lights.

You can very easily do it locally.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

With voice control?

subtext ,

Yes

www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Which is why I said

If the Home Assistant voice Appliance stuff can get its shit together and I can get one for reasonable prices I will move to that (or something like it) instead.

Unfortunately, when I looked most recently it still wasn’t even remotely close to being ready. Particularly the hardware options.

subtext ,

They say that you can build one for $13.

home-assistant.io/…/thirteen-usd-voice-remote/

They also have on their roadmap that they’re working to see if they can build or engineer out or whatever an all in one, easy to set up voice satellite hardware as one of their next up priorities.

www.home-assistant.io/blog/…/roadmap-2024h1/

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Once the second thing happens, assuming it’s any good, then I will look into switching again.

Until then, there don’t seem to be many great options.

AA5B ,

You could also argue Apple is heading in an interesting direction with on-device AI. Im ready to switch to Apple TV for fewer ads, as soon as they release a new version capable of on-device AI

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

I agree. I do keep considering it, but the additional value to me right now vs cost hasn’t been worth it.

Same with moving from Roku to Apple TV.

Also, not having much in the Apple ecosystem is a factor. Down to just one occasionally-used Mac (and other macs that just serve as servers in the homelab)

GooseFinger ,

More than just “ripcord likes to have lights on at 6:00 pm,” surprisingly.

It knows what brand lights you have, who’s interacting with it, who you might be with if anyone speaks in the background, what times and days you’re typically home… it’ll even infer your mood based on how your voice sounds.

Unfortunately, Amazon isn’t required to disclose every bit of personal data they take from you, so only so much is known about it. If you consider though that data collection is a new, multi-billion dollar industry, and how effective hundreds of PhDs in data science and social-engineering can be with near infinite resources to develop tools to extract as much information from these devices as possible, it starts becoming more believable.

Here’s a good paper I found: arxiv.org/pdf/2204.10920

ThirdWorldOrder ,

“By the way, did you know…”

I had around 10 echos and replaced them all with HomePods. Much better.

ripcord , (edited )
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

I agree, although I haven’t heard that for a year.

I have 10 rooms with voice assistants so I havent been motivated enough to suck it up and try to start replacing them with HomePods. I’m still hoping that a good, reasonably priced, fully local, HA-integrated solution (that I don’t have to build myself) shows up.

AA5B ,

HA is making good progress toward a home automation voice assistant, which is definitely cool, but I have read about where it works as a general voice assistant. Siri is a good general voice assistant and Apple is making good progress toward home automation, so I’d go in that direction too. As soon as a new HonePod comes out to support on-device AI, I’m in

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Unfortunately they still seem like they have a long way to go.

A huge part of the problem seems to be availability of good, reasknably-priced Appliance hardware. I’m looking for something that I don’t have to build, that is $100 or so, and that’s at least reasonably good (like, I’d accept the sound and microphone quality of the 1st gen echo mini which weren’t that great.

But nothing like that seems to exist. Hopefully there’s something now and I’ve just missed it.

AA5B ,

Yeah, mighty tempting, especially since I wouldn’t need anywhere near that many. On the assumption the new improved Siri will need on device ai, I’ll go for it when they release that

aniki ,

Home Assistant will always be free.

cloudless OP ,

Is it able to use a LLM?

ColonelPanic ,

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.

DJDarren ,

That’s good, because it’s dog shit.

aniki ,

The models? The interface? Spinning your own? Home Assistant in general? What the fuck are you on about?

downpunxx ,

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

Waraugh ,

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.

waterSticksToMyBalls ,

Skill issue

FanciestPants ,

Do you have a hook up on some free dog shit?!

DJDarren ,

Download the Alexa app and have at it.

thirteene ,

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.

aniki ,

I haven’t done it myself but it looks like you’ll need some esphome devices like a speaker and a microphone

subtext ,

It doesn’t help you if you need something right now, but Home Assistant is looking into building / engineering their own voice satellite device

www.home-assistant.io/blog/…/roadmap-2024h1/

themeatbridge ,

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.

BarbecueCowboy ,

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.

themeatbridge ,

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.

ocassionallyaduck ,

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.

SkyezOpen ,

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?

ocassionallyaduck ,

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.

SkyezOpen ,

Is it much different from Google home? Seems similar from what I could tell from a quick glance.

ocassionallyaduck ,

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.

KevonLooney ,

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.

BarbecueCowboy ,

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.

lightnsfw ,

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.

DJDarren ,

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.

cosmicboi ,

Alexa makes an excellent weatherperson :)

mPony ,

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

draughtcyclist ,

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.

GreyEyedGhost ,

Won’t keep fake reviews off their platform. It’s not a matter of ability, but of will.

brbposting ,

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?

GreyEyedGhost ,

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.

radicalautonomy ,

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.

mPony ,

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.

Crashumbc ,

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.

PlexSheep ,

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”
todd_bonzalez ,

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.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

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.

cloudless OP ,

… and pushing ads on echo show devices.

essteeyou ,

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).

Munkisquisher ,

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

essteeyou ,

Nah, I’ve paid for it and it seems there’s no refund.

Player2 ,

Last time I canceled it it was very easy to do (amazon.ca)

GamingChairModel ,

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.

essteeyou ,

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.

androogee ,

It’s absolutely true, my friend. Only takes a minute.

They just wanna scare you out of cancelling.

essteeyou ,

Well, I’ve set the reminder. There’s no urgency to cancel with 6 months left on the clock.

GamingChairModel ,

I’m not sure that’s true.

Well, I’m sure it’s true. I’ve started and stopped Prime benefits multiple times.

diannetea ,

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.

AA5B ,

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

essteeyou ,

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. :-/

corsicanguppy ,

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.

Pacattack57 ,

If my Alexa stopped working because it needed a subscription it’s going straight in the trash.

ftp ,

Already there. Finally got fed up with the “by the way” trash prompts

InternetUser2012 ,

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.

Cl1nk ,

. . .

kandoh ,

Those are periods!

lando55 ,

Sorry

• • • ノ( ゜-゜ノ)

dirtySourdough ,

Neat, lots more e-waste incoming

demizerone ,

All the two alexas I own were given to me. Fuck no I am not paying $10 a month for a talking weather reporter.

sunzu ,

People don't want that shit for free... Why would they pay for it.

Just slap more ads on it, I don't know haha

cloudless OP ,

The New Siri seems to be quite useful, with “personal context” understanding my calendar, messages, mail etc.

ChatGPT 4 voice mode is very impressive, with the conversation getting clarifications and finding exactly the information I want (when it is not hallucinating). ChatGPT-4o will be amazing if it is as good as what we saw from the demo.

It is not for everyone, but I personally use AI chat every day and find it useful.

sunzu ,

Chatgpt finds you useful also!

ShadowRam ,

I'll integrate ChatGPT into my household when I can run it locally on my own server computer.

aniki ,

You can do that right meow. Not ChatGPT but open source models.

BeardedGingerWonder ,

Anything decent that doesn’t require a couple of 3090s?

aniki ,

Most assistance models will run in a pi

Matt ,

GPT4ALL

FreeChat

Alpaca

BeardedGingerWonder ,

Thanks I’ll have to check them out - are these going to be gateway AIs that will end up with me talking myself into buying 2x3090s? I’m just asking now to know how much I’m going to test the bounds of WAF in the near future.

ThirdWorldOrder ,

Are you not able to access ChatGPT-4o? Its what my app defaults to instead of regular 4

cloudless OP ,

I am a free user, and it is still chatgpt 4.

And the new voice model doesn’t seem to be available yet, even for paid users.

ThirdWorldOrder ,

Alright I’m a paid user and I do have the voice model. Had it for a few weeks now.

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/59db500b-3605-46ce-ba41-b4b1e64f552c.jpeg

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/a1667801-6d9f-4f24-b6cb-9854ba090d32.png

cloudless OP ,

That’s voice chat which has been there for a long time.

The 4o voice model is different. 4o can chat much more naturally, and you can interrupt the voice chat in 4o.

Try it, you can’t interrupt the chat unless you touch the screen.

You can go back to see the 4o voice chat demo, and you will find out which different it is.

kandoh ,

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.

flop_leash_973 ,

I wouldn’t be able to find a use for Alexa if they were paying me $10/month to use it.

dutchkimble ,

I’d buy 2, start a neverending conversation going between them, and lock em away in the corner in the attic.

androogee ,

Make it three, call it The Ellipsis

bitchkat ,

Seeing as how I’ve never used it for free …

cmnybo ,

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.

MeekerThanBeaker ,

Eh … it’s not spying. It can’t even understand me when I’m talking to it.

lolcatnip ,

But the one in your pocket is fine?

BeardedGingerWonder ,

One of the reasons I use pixel phones, Google already knows everything, no point in Samsung knowing it too

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