4 ms·

After a decade of free Alexa, Amazon now wants you to pay

40 points by petethomas 2y ago

bongdudebrah 2y ago
[dead]
adamnemecek 2y ago
I wouldn’t use Alexa if Amazon paid me.
bhhaskin 2y ago
We only use Alexa to turn the lights on and off, set the thermostat temperature and tell us the weather. No way would we pay for that.
- Loughla 2y ago
  It's my Pandora radio and a handy calculator for decimals and fractions when I'm doing woodworking. No way I'm paying for that.
- bhelkey 2y ago
  > Amazon is planning to sell a paid subscription for an artificial intelligence-revamped version of Alexa > you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee. It seems as if the current experience will remain free and this an available upgrade.
- kjsingh 2y ago
  Caroline reported that you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.
uoaei 2y ago
thank god, finally my relatives will uninstall it in their homes
- melling 2y ago
  Nothing changes for them.
- throwaway657656 2y ago
  I never understood this sentiment given your relatives' smartphones also have microphones.
  - uoaei 2y ago
    The smartphones at least nominally do not have consent to freely listen and record. Alexa is different in that you have full awareness of its capabilities when you agree to use it.
cableshaft 2y ago
...for extra features. Its existing capabilities are still free (at least for now). Considering I only ever use it as a timer, an impromptu alarm clock, and to ask what the time or temperature is when I'm about to head outside sometimes (can you believe there used to be a phone number you had to call to get that information if you didn't want to wait 7 minutes for the weather channel to do its forecast again?), I will just go without if they ever try to charge for that.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > Its existing capabilities are still free (at least for now). They've yanked at least one set of features, Alexa Guard. Its replacement, Alexa Emergency Assist, is the same thing but paid. https://www.safewise.com/news/alexa-guard-no-longer-supported-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.safewise.com/news/alexa-guard-no-longer-supporte...
- Loughla 2y ago
  Weather: weather.gov, look up your location and bookmark it. Weather alerts: NOAA Storm prediction center convective outlooks and bookmark it. They're the best thing the government does in the US.
cbanek 2y ago
And yet another way to try and destroy journalism: AI summaries of the news. Why not just listen to the news? You can listen to BBC on Alexa, along with almost any other news radio station you please. If you want short summaries, just look at the AP. AI summaries might not be correct or might miss out on important context: in the news, the details are everything. And I doubt Amazon will be paying for the news services they scrape. Are AI summaries of news really that much better than just listening to the news? Does the AI part mean it's going to try and figure out what news stories I listen to? Or will it just be the same for everyone, and then you might just say Alexa give me the news, and you can program it to give you news summaries from a huge list of available sources, which are not AI generated. This seems like a stupid product idea, akin to subscription mouse. And I actually like and use my Alexa devices quite a bit (nest thermostat, smart water heater, smart lights, timer, weather, use as a speaker for my laptop), so I think I'd be their target market.
- hluska 2y ago
  The word ‘news’ appears once in the entire article. Here is the usage: “Among features of the subscription Alexa, expected in October, are recipe suggestions based on your family’s dietary restrictions and AI summaries of the news. Caroline reported that you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.” You went on that entire rant and called an entire product stupid based off of that?
  - cbanek 2y ago
    AI summaries of the news being one of two features mentioned in the article, so I'd assume those are the newsworthy things. My point is that this functionality is already present on the device and works quite well without needing any AI buzz or subscription fees.
VirusNewbie 2y ago
I would pay if it worked well. But it seemed to have gotten worse over the last couple years.
- TheCowboy 2y ago
  I sometimes wonder if I'm just biased or if performance really did get worse. It would be cool to have an anonymous Alexa coder or someone who got the axe there chime in as sometimes happens. But I think the main problem was their entire vision for monetization was just nonsensical according to what I read. So I think they wasted many hours of effort on that front instead of trying to make devices people found enjoyable to use or that actually delivered value by working well. People don't really want to buy blind via a device if they don't have to, and if they did it would likely come at the substitution of buying directly from the site. They nixed their web interface, and the mobile app performed poorly. They invested talent in coming up with buttons to reorder very specific stuff like laundry detergent, but something like their "Subscribe & Save" seems like a more sensible approach to that problem.
  - stackskipton 2y ago
    We used to buy from Alexa but when Amazon went to shit and we couldn't trust that "Order Tide Pods" would result in similar price/quantity Tide Pods showing up, we stopped doing that. Plugins would have been great if plugin store didn't look like main Amazon store.
  - thomaskang08 2y ago
    Most people in Alexa don't even believe in the monetization. We are actually building this thing and joking about it at the same time. You can imagine the quality is deteriorating because no one cares about the product anymore.
pnathan 2y ago
Alexa is a wonderful idea in search of a serious use case. It does timers, tells the weather, and, uh, shouts at me from Ring when someone is at the door. Handy when cooking and I don't want to touch something. The voice recognition is iffy, the misunderstanding is constant, the vocal command line is painful. The plugins don't work seamlessly at all. But it's a good timer.
- MR4D 2y ago
  A great timer - especially in the kitchen! But my iPhone does the same. And for $120 per year, that’s a good chunk of my iPhone cost every 4 years. E-waste, here we come!
  - weaksauce 2y ago
    a cool tip is that you can name your timers... hey siri set a timer named pasta for 10 minutes. or hey siri set a timer for pasta... "how long?"... 10 minutes
    - chrisweekly 2y ago
      good tip but it's even simpler: "Hey Siri, 10 minute pasta timer."
      - weaksauce 2y ago
        even better!
      - drivingmenuts 2y ago
        Are you cooking it about a minute less than it says on the package?
- ravenstine 2y ago
  It's kind of amazing how quickly it went from being a part of The Future TM to feeling like tech from the 1980s.
- 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
LegitShady 2y ago
The only amazon device I own is a kindle and I still hate the idea that I can't know if its listening in, or trying to share my wifi with other devices through amazon sidewalk, or whatever. They can charge as much or as little as they'd like for it. The idea of using such a service is repulsive, even for free. Amazon is the enemy, not your friend. Giving them more access to more of your life is a bad idea.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  The basic idea of Alexa is great, the problem is, as you point out, it'd under the control of an untrustworthy company. It's too bad we can't buy Alexa (/-like) devices that run auditable open-source code, and connect them to an open-source program running on our home servers. I'd be happy to have such a device/service, as long as it's under my control.
  - LegitShady 2y ago
    I don't know that there are any companies I'd trust to run alexa or an alexa like service. It's not like I trust google, microsoft, or apple more. I don't trust any of them.
metadat 2y ago
https://archive.today/TjAle https://archive.today/TjAle
relyks 2y ago
If you're able to have an actual conversation with it to clarify your intentions or for it to interpret more complex instructions, there is actually a lot of potential here
underseacables 2y ago
I use it as a reminder , timer, and my lights. That's all it's really good for, maybe a joke every now and then.
maxbond 2y ago
This is better than the usual story, where a company abandons a product and the units are sent to the landfill. Kudos to Amazon.
nharada 2y ago
Do they have their own LLM under the hood or are they using someone else's?
sys_64738 2y ago
I trust GOOG more than AMZN so I doubt I would pay ever.
adrr 2y ago
No one is going to pay unless its part of the prime membership. Put a decent CPU and memory into new devices and run it AI locally.
jccalhoun 2y ago
I have 4 Alexa devices. I use them every day as an alarm, a radio in the morning, timers, and to turn lights on and off, and make video calls to my parents. Like most people when I got my first one I played around with some other things but quickly stopped bothering. I'm perfectly happy with them as they are and don't know what else I would use them for. In browser and on phone AI have already filled the need for AI that I have at the moment.
- grugagag 2y ago
  Amazon wants to squeeze you if possible, and probably change things around so you’re not happy anymore and sell you back the things you’re using today.
GenericDev 2y ago
[dead]
SebFender 2y ago
no.
kkfx 2y ago
Honestly I never feel the need to have high quality always on mic, or a macrobug (as opposite to classic spaying devices, payed by those who spy instead of me, and well hidden instead of being in plain sight)... Sure, if we live in the house, not at a desk, might be nice to have some "audio-based UI" but it's far from being a normal case. While I work or anyway I'm at the desk I can see anything quicker, when I'm not I'm typically do something else so I've no need to ask for current weather or something like that. On contrary I do like MUCH home automation, but on MY terms. I do not like much Home Assistant but that's the least unusable of all I've tried, and I do like to have for instance: - auto close/open certain roller blinds following the Sun position and the home+outside temperature - run or not run water heater depending on water temp, available p.v., others running/scheduled charge, next day weather forecast - auto-closing main home water valve when I go out for more than one day, also auto-close inlet, open purge in case of food sensors alarm - ... Long story short SIMPLE things, but beyond Alexa capabilities anyway. And things that could be far easier if a concept of OPEN, STANDARD appliance exists instead of the current sorry state of IoT...

40 points by petethomas 2y ago

bongdudebrah 2y ago

[dead]

adamnemecek 2y ago

I wouldn’t use Alexa if Amazon paid me.

bhhaskin 2y ago

We only use Alexa to turn the lights on and off, set the thermostat temperature and tell us the weather. No way would we pay for that.

Loughla 2y ago
It's my Pandora radio and a handy calculator for decimals and fractions when I'm doing woodworking. No way I'm paying for that.
bhelkey 2y ago
> Amazon is planning to sell a paid subscription for an artificial intelligence-revamped version of Alexa > you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee. It seems as if the current experience will remain free and this an available upgrade.
kjsingh 2y ago
Caroline reported that you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.

uoaei 2y ago

thank god, finally my relatives will uninstall it in their homes

melling 2y ago
Nothing changes for them.
throwaway657656 2y ago
I never understood this sentiment given your relatives' smartphones also have microphones.
- uoaei 2y ago
  The smartphones at least nominally do not have consent to freely listen and record. Alexa is different in that you have full awareness of its capabilities when you agree to use it.

cableshaft 2y ago

...for extra features. Its existing capabilities are still free (at least for now). Considering I only ever use it as a timer, an impromptu alarm clock, and to ask what the time or temperature is when I'm about to head outside sometimes (can you believe there used to be a phone number you had to call to get that information if you didn't want to wait 7 minutes for the weather channel to do its forecast again?), I will just go without if they ever try to charge for that.

ceejayoz 2y ago
> Its existing capabilities are still free (at least for now). They've yanked at least one set of features, Alexa Guard. Its replacement, Alexa Emergency Assist, is the same thing but paid. https://www.safewise.com/news/alexa-guard-no-longer-supported-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.safewise.com/news/alexa-guard-no-longer-supporte...
Loughla 2y ago
Weather: weather.gov, look up your location and bookmark it. Weather alerts: NOAA Storm prediction center convective outlooks and bookmark it. They're the best thing the government does in the US.

cbanek 2y ago

And yet another way to try and destroy journalism: AI summaries of the news. Why not just listen to the news? You can listen to BBC on Alexa, along with almost any other news radio station you please. If you want short summaries, just look at the AP. AI summaries might not be correct or might miss out on important context: in the news, the details are everything. And I doubt Amazon will be paying for the news services they scrape. Are AI summaries of news really that much better than just listening to the news? Does the AI part mean it's going to try and figure out what news stories I listen to? Or will it just be the same for everyone, and then you might just say Alexa give me the news, and you can program it to give you news summaries from a huge list of available sources, which are not AI generated. This seems like a stupid product idea, akin to subscription mouse. And I actually like and use my Alexa devices quite a bit (nest thermostat, smart water heater, smart lights, timer, weather, use as a speaker for my laptop), so I think I'd be their target market.

hluska 2y ago
The word ‘news’ appears once in the entire article. Here is the usage: “Among features of the subscription Alexa, expected in October, are recipe suggestions based on your family’s dietary restrictions and AI summaries of the news. Caroline reported that you’ll still be able to use the current version of Alexa without a subscription fee.” You went on that entire rant and called an entire product stupid based off of that?
- cbanek 2y ago
  AI summaries of the news being one of two features mentioned in the article, so I'd assume those are the newsworthy things. My point is that this functionality is already present on the device and works quite well without needing any AI buzz or subscription fees.

VirusNewbie 2y ago

I would pay if it worked well. But it seemed to have gotten worse over the last couple years.

TheCowboy 2y ago
I sometimes wonder if I'm just biased or if performance really did get worse. It would be cool to have an anonymous Alexa coder or someone who got the axe there chime in as sometimes happens. But I think the main problem was their entire vision for monetization was just nonsensical according to what I read. So I think they wasted many hours of effort on that front instead of trying to make devices people found enjoyable to use or that actually delivered value by working well. People don't really want to buy blind via a device if they don't have to, and if they did it would likely come at the substitution of buying directly from the site. They nixed their web interface, and the mobile app performed poorly. They invested talent in coming up with buttons to reorder very specific stuff like laundry detergent, but something like their "Subscribe & Save" seems like a more sensible approach to that problem.
- stackskipton 2y ago
  We used to buy from Alexa but when Amazon went to shit and we couldn't trust that "Order Tide Pods" would result in similar price/quantity Tide Pods showing up, we stopped doing that. Plugins would have been great if plugin store didn't look like main Amazon store.
- thomaskang08 2y ago
  Most people in Alexa don't even believe in the monetization. We are actually building this thing and joking about it at the same time. You can imagine the quality is deteriorating because no one cares about the product anymore.

pnathan 2y ago

Alexa is a wonderful idea in search of a serious use case. It does timers, tells the weather, and, uh, shouts at me from Ring when someone is at the door. Handy when cooking and I don't want to touch something. The voice recognition is iffy, the misunderstanding is constant, the vocal command line is painful. The plugins don't work seamlessly at all. But it's a good timer.

MR4D 2y ago
A great timer - especially in the kitchen! But my iPhone does the same. And for $120 per year, that’s a good chunk of my iPhone cost every 4 years. E-waste, here we come!
- weaksauce 2y ago
  a cool tip is that you can name your timers... hey siri set a timer named pasta for 10 minutes. or hey siri set a timer for pasta... "how long?"... 10 minutes
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    good tip but it's even simpler: "Hey Siri, 10 minute pasta timer."
    - weaksauce 2y ago
      even better!
    - drivingmenuts 2y ago
      Are you cooking it about a minute less than it says on the package?
ravenstine 2y ago
It's kind of amazing how quickly it went from being a part of The Future TM to feeling like tech from the 1980s.
2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

LegitShady 2y ago

The only amazon device I own is a kindle and I still hate the idea that I can't know if its listening in, or trying to share my wifi with other devices through amazon sidewalk, or whatever. They can charge as much or as little as they'd like for it. The idea of using such a service is repulsive, even for free. Amazon is the enemy, not your friend. Giving them more access to more of your life is a bad idea.

shiroiushi 2y ago
The basic idea of Alexa is great, the problem is, as you point out, it'd under the control of an untrustworthy company. It's too bad we can't buy Alexa (/-like) devices that run auditable open-source code, and connect them to an open-source program running on our home servers. I'd be happy to have such a device/service, as long as it's under my control.
- LegitShady 2y ago
  I don't know that there are any companies I'd trust to run alexa or an alexa like service. It's not like I trust google, microsoft, or apple more. I don't trust any of them.

metadat 2y ago

https://archive.today/TjAle https://archive.today/TjAle

relyks 2y ago

If you're able to have an actual conversation with it to clarify your intentions or for it to interpret more complex instructions, there is actually a lot of potential here

underseacables 2y ago

I use it as a reminder , timer, and my lights. That's all it's really good for, maybe a joke every now and then.

maxbond 2y ago

This is better than the usual story, where a company abandons a product and the units are sent to the landfill. Kudos to Amazon.

nharada 2y ago

Do they have their own LLM under the hood or are they using someone else's?

sys_64738 2y ago

I trust GOOG more than AMZN so I doubt I would pay ever.

adrr 2y ago

No one is going to pay unless its part of the prime membership. Put a decent CPU and memory into new devices and run it AI locally.

jccalhoun 2y ago

I have 4 Alexa devices. I use them every day as an alarm, a radio in the morning, timers, and to turn lights on and off, and make video calls to my parents. Like most people when I got my first one I played around with some other things but quickly stopped bothering. I'm perfectly happy with them as they are and don't know what else I would use them for. In browser and on phone AI have already filled the need for AI that I have at the moment.

grugagag 2y ago
Amazon wants to squeeze you if possible, and probably change things around so you’re not happy anymore and sell you back the things you’re using today.

GenericDev 2y ago

[dead]

SebFender 2y ago

no.

kkfx 2y ago

Honestly I never feel the need to have high quality always on mic, or a macrobug (as opposite to classic spaying devices, payed by those who spy instead of me, and well hidden instead of being in plain sight)... Sure, if we live in the house, not at a desk, might be nice to have some "audio-based UI" but it's far from being a normal case. While I work or anyway I'm at the desk I can see anything quicker, when I'm not I'm typically do something else so I've no need to ask for current weather or something like that. On contrary I do like MUCH home automation, but on MY terms. I do not like much Home Assistant but that's the least unusable of all I've tried, and I do like to have for instance: - auto close/open certain roller blinds following the Sun position and the home+outside temperature - run or not run water heater depending on water temp, available p.v., others running/scheduled charge, next day weather forecast - auto-closing main home water valve when I go out for more than one day, also auto-close inlet, open purge in case of food sensors alarm - ... Long story short SIMPLE things, but beyond Alexa capabilities anyway. And things that could be far easier if a concept of OPEN, STANDARD appliance exists instead of the current sorry state of IoT...