Amazon Alexa getting a conversational makeover with genAI, can it be as good as GPT-4o?

Amazon is giving Alexa a major upgrade later in 2024, with plans to make the voice assistant more conversational by incorporating generative AI features. 

The new Alexa is expected to be more than just a smart speaker for setting alarms and playing music. Generative AI will help in for more natural and engaging two-way conversations, similar to what users might experience with chatbots like ChatGPT, specially after the release of GPT-4o, which sounds so much like Scarlett Johansson, OpenAI had to take it down. 

There’s a possibility that this upgraded Alexa might require a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of the AI tech behind it. This would be quite a shift from the current free-to-use model.

The pressure to improve Alexa is due to increased competition in AI chatbot development. Amazon is renewing its focus on making Alexa profitable and catching up with competitors like Google and OpenAI.

Despite the challenges, Alexa holds a strong advantage: a vast user base with hundreds of millions of devices already in homes.

The exact details of the upgraded Alexa, including the subscription fee and launch date, are still unclear. It will be exciting to see how close Amazon is to bringing Alexa to OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o. If it’s not close, then I believe it won’t be worth it because, unlike ChatGPT, Alexa is only conversational. 

More here.