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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 almos
by 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 agoThe 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 agoAI 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.