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Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant as it prepares to launch a new paid subscription plan this year, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.
Despite its early success in becoming a household name, Amazon's Alexa voice assistant has struggled to build a feasible business model, leading to major layoffs and cost cutting measures over the past year.
The new subscription plan, which will be backed by a superpowered version of Alexa, represents Amazon's latest attempt to revive the voice technology that was once considered the key to its future.
Amazon's former hardware and devices boss, Dave Limp, also said that the company will have to start charging for the more advanced version of Alexa at some point, given the high cost of running AI models.
A limited preview with 15,000 external customers discovered that while Remarkable Alexa is generally good at being conversational and informative, it is still deflecting answers, often giving unnecessarily long or inaccurate responses, the people said.
Last year, Amazon also created a new general artificial intelligence team that's working on its "most ambitious" and "most expansive" large language models, BI previously reported.
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