Amazon is upgrading its decade-old Alexa voice assistant with generative AI and plans to charge a monthly subscription fee to offset the cost of the technology.
  • adam_y@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Well, once again a tech company gives a service I don’t care for and overhaul I don’t want and tries to charge a fee I won’t pay.

    I suspect when this doesn’t do the numbers they want they’ll try adding a user fee to oxygen as a retaliation.

  • Infynis@midwest.socialEnglish
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    6 months ago

    Oh no! Where else will I find a Bluetooth speaker that also tells me the temperature outside?

  • Bogasse@lemmy.mlEnglish
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    6 months ago

    I hope for one good thing to come out from all this AI madness : people might get used to pay for a service on the internet again. If this miraculously happens it could lead to people more cautiously choose services over quality instead of the one with darkest patterns.

    One can still dream…

    • Bizarroland@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high.

      You’re thinking like you are the customer and the customer is always right, so if you pay for a service it should provide you what you want, right?

      This is not that scenario.

      You are not the customer. You are a product that is being sold to advertisers. It does not matter if you also pay them money, you are still the product. If you pay them money on top of being sold then you are just an especially profitable product.

      Paying them money will not cause you to cease being a product, no matter how much money you are willing to pay.

      If you use a different company’s product that starts off with you being the customer, eventually, they will learn that they can make more money by selling you to other people, and they will.

  • InternetUser2012@midwest.socialEnglish
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    6 months ago

    If I have to pay to have my dots and ring, i will throw the shit out in the street

    Edit: Yeah, I’m done with them anyways, they’re trash.

  • db2@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    6 months ago

    Looks like I’ll be selling the few Amazon Alexa-centric devices I’ve got.

  • Bonehead@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    And this is exact the reason I’m building a Home Assistant instance with local voice processing. Right now it takes a few seconds to process a request and take action on my crappy 1.8ghz laptop with only 4gb of RAM, but it basically does everything I use Alexa for. This announcement is just encouraging me to build a better server with an esp32 satellite.

    • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
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      6 months ago

      I’m in the process of this now too. The only I need that I can’t figure out within home-assistant assist, is unit conversions. Converting measurements when cooking is one of the main thing we use the Alexa for these days.

  • selokichtli@lemmy.mlEnglish
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    6 months ago

    I didn’t think people really expected to believe that their smart stuff was really theirs. Did they? Imagine renting your bulbs to Amazon.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
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    6 months ago

    Watch the existing one become even more insufferable to push you into paying for the upgrade.