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submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Running AI is so expensive that Amazon will probably charge you to use Alexa in future, says outgoing exec::In an interview with Bloomberg, Dave Limp said that he "absolutely" believes that Amazon will soon start charging a subscription fee for Alexa

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[-] Kalkaline@leminal.space 147 points 10 months ago

Alexa is so bad though. Who's going to pay for that?

[-] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 75 points 10 months ago

“By the way, you can now pay for Alexa AI option if you want me to reply in a slightly smarter way, but I will still cut you off with ads and other useless things. To activate AlexaAI say activate”

[-] db2@sopuli.xyz 51 points 10 months ago

"Welcome to the PiHole, Alexa."

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[-] JonEFive@midwest.social 26 points 10 months ago

"No"

"I heard 'activate'. Thank you! Your credit card will be charged $129 annually. To cancel, please log on to the website because there's no way we're letting you get out of this mess the same way we got you into it."

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[-] art@lemmy.world 114 points 10 months ago

We need to move AI from the cloud to our own hardware running in our homes. Free, open source, privacy focused hardware. It'll eventually be very affordable.

[-] Soundhole@lemm.ee 47 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That's already here. Anyone can run AI chatbots similar to, but not as intelligent as, Chatgpt or Bard.

Llama.cpp and koboldcpp allow anyone to run models locally, even with only a CPU if there's no dedicated graphics card available (although more slowly). And there are numerous open source models available that can be trained for just about any task.

Hell, you can even run llama.cpp on Android phones.

This has all taken place in just the last year or so. In five to ten years, imo, AI will be everywhere and may even replace the need for mobile Internet connections in terms of looking up information.

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[-] pyldriver@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago

God I wish, I would just love local voice control to turn my lights and such on and off... but noooooooooooo

[-] a1studmuffin@aussie.zone 9 points 10 months ago

It's the year of the voice for Home Assistant. Given their current trajectory, I'm hopeful they'll have a pretty darn good replacement for the most common use cases of Google Home/Alexa/Siri in another year. Setting timers, shopping list management, music streaming, doorbell/intercom management. If you're on the fence about a Nabu Casa subscription, pull the trigger as it helps them stay independent and not get bought out or destroyed by commercial interests.

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[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 83 points 10 months ago

AI is being touted as the solution to everything these days. It's really not, and we are going to find that out the hard way.

[-] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 43 points 10 months ago

I get what you’re saying, but voice assistants are one of the main places LLMs belong.

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[-] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 9 points 10 months ago

Hey that's only because Amazon, Google and Microsoft (et al) just doesn't have the Money to Make it good!!

So what about 9.99 a month?

4.99 if you pay up front for a year?

Euh, or how much can you cough up, like for a year or at least for Q4, I'm literally on a bad roll here.

[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

I'm not going to buy into a subscription model for something I've already paid for. This subscription model crap is complete bullshit.

We even tried to do it with heated seats recently. Like install heated seats in your car, but disable them in software. It's crazy that companies think they can get away with this.

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[-] 5BC2E7@lemmy.world 58 points 10 months ago

Alexa is more like a telemarketer disguised as an assistant. Every interaction is followed by a “by the way . Its a shit experience so I stopped using mine.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 36 points 10 months ago

Alexa was designed explicitly for that purpose. They lose money on every Echo sold, the whole idea was they would make money selling you stuff. Turns out people would rather use their Echo to check the weather, get recipes, etc. rather than voice shop.

[-] hightrix@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago

I just can’t see a use case for voice shopping. There are almost zero instances where I want to buy something without having a visual of that thing in front of me at time of purchase.

I could possibly see something like “buy another stick of deodorant”, but even then I want to see if there are deals or some other options and would want to check the price at a minimum.

Seems like yet another MBA idea.

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[-] o0oradaro0o@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

Setting all my Alexa's to UK English got rid of all marketing "by the ways." I still regret going with the Alexa ecosystem but at least for now there is a workaround for the most rage inducing part of it.

[-] galaxies_collide@lemmy.world 56 points 10 months ago

So they get massive amounts of free data for Machine Learning, but want to charge users for supplying it?

[-] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 25 points 10 months ago

It's like charging you for cable and then shoving ads down your throat.

[-] billiam0202@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago

It's like charging you for Prime Video and then shoving ads down your throat.

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[-] tempest@lemmy.ca 14 points 10 months ago

That's often the case. They can have their cake and eat it too. Shareholders would expect nothing less.

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[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago

So they expect that people pay for being spied upon and seriously data mined?

[-] BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 10 months ago

Yes and people will pay for it.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 11 points 10 months ago

Sometimes I can't help thinking some people deserve to be taken advantage of.

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[-] DemBoSain@midwest.social 44 points 10 months ago

Alexa has a feature where you tell it you're leaving the house and it will listen for smoke detectors or breaking glass, alerting you through your phone if it detects something. Amazon is putting that behind a paywall next year.

[-] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 12 points 10 months ago

Let me in your house and I'll observe it for you for less money

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[-] DigitalFrank@lemmy.world 41 points 10 months ago

I already don't use it, you don't have to sell me on it.

[-] lloram239@feddit.de 40 points 10 months ago

Just FYI, Alexa records everything you speak into it, you can listen to it here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GHXNJNLTRWCTBBGW

[-] foggy@lemmy.world 36 points 10 months ago

...charge me to use Alexa?

I already avoid it like the plague.

[-] topinambour_rex@lemmy.world 34 points 10 months ago

I have doubts alexa is using AI, seen how dumb it is, but well

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[-] OrangeCorvus@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Good luck, I guess? Got the first Google home, at first it was great, I was asking it tons of questions. Then the questions stopped, used it for turning on the lights and other automations. Then I installed Home Assistant and the only command Google Home got was to set a timer to know when to pull things out of the oven. Eventually I stopped doing that.

At the moment all Google/Nest Homes have their mic cut off, I only use them to stream music in my house from my NAS via Plex. So yeah..

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[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 30 points 10 months ago

How to make me go back to buying shit in person, by Amazon.com

[-] tinfox@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago

Ok. I'll be the weirdo. If it's actually useful, I would pay for it.

Not if it's just the parlor trick that it currently is.

[-] theragu40@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago

This is the killer for all this shit right now as far as I'm concerned. All of it lives squarely in "huh...neat" territory. I have yet to see anything I felt was truly necessary. Until that happens, paying is a non starter for me.

[-] JonEFive@midwest.social 10 points 10 months ago

This is why I'm so confused by Amazon's approach. I know they've already sunk millions if not billions of dollars into this, so why has the user experience not improved in the last 8 years?

I'm not going to buy things with my voice when just getting the lights to turn off or music to play can be an infuriating endeavor. Speech recognition has stagnated.

The third party integrations are just so clunky too. They could have made money by selling licenses to businesses in order to access the service, but again, they haven't improved that experience at all.

The "Alexa, let me talk to dominos." or "Alexa, ask LG to turn off the TV" is just stupidly cumbersome. Why can't you set up preferred providers? I don't have to say "ask Spotify to play music" I just say "play music", so we know it's possible. It would be trivial to implement other preferred service providers compared to the overall scale of Alexa.

[-] theragu40@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

I don't know if you're in IT at all, but the really crazy thing is that as half baked as Alexa stuff feels...a ton of AWS's offerings feel the exact same way. Their marketing material is great, and I do believe their engineers are passionate and have the right intentions. But none of it feels "finished". It all feels like an elaborate beta test. Things don't work, documentation is out of date or just plain wrong, it's impossible to get actual expert support from Amazon directly.

AWS is their biggest money maker and even that is a cobbled together, confusing pile half the time. Sometimes feels like everything is a house of cards.

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[-] Mojojojo1993@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago

I use Alexa as a way to use an old speaker system. I wouldn't pay to use any "smart" speaker systems. They are pretty dumb and I've already paid once

[-] WindowsEnjoyer@sh.itjust.works 17 points 10 months ago

We upgraded our technologies so much that it'a becoming unsustainable for us, so we are increasing prices.

[-] FidiFadi@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

Has Amazon considered making a stationary AI?

[-] gearheart@lemm.ee 15 points 10 months ago

Their using the public to train AI. Then charging the public for the AI it trained.

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[-] wer2@lemm.ee 13 points 10 months ago

My Home Assistant Voice is getting really close to displacing Alexa.

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[-] Illuminostro@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

They won't be charging me, because I don't buy shit from Amazon, and don't use their spy platform.

[-] Random_user@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

All I want alexa to do is turn my lights on and off, set timers, and show me my own pictures. And it can BARELY do that without fucking it up. Everyone I know wants the same, they expect nothing more from it. "AI" features of Alexa aren't t needed or wanted by anyone I've talked to about it.

[-] greenskye@lemm.ee 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Well so far my Google Smart speakers have two functions:

  • Voice activated timer
  • Wi-Fi speaker that I only ever cast to with my phone, never actually talk to them.

Don't think I'll miss that if they decide to charge for it.

[-] lps2@lemmy.ml 11 points 10 months ago

My Google homes have gotten progressively worse over the years. Half the time it will say it's setting a timer but nope, no timer. Recently I'll tell it to play music and it will reply that I don't have any devices with that feature.... they're all Google homes or Chromecast which absolutely play music. Really like the hardware but the software is utter shit

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[-] EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 10 months ago

They're never going to be satisfied with the amount of money that have.

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[-] negativeyoda@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

They thought people would be like "Alexa, but me a ton of shit on Amazon" but people just use it for timers and the weather

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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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