Amazon has been working to release its big AI update to Alexa in October, finally giving it a specific launch window. It is a big step forward since it originally announced its plans late last year. The new AI will bring a long list of enhancements to Alexa, finally moving it away from being just a simple digital assistant and toward being more of a proper (modern) AI experience.
The new update/upgrade is (currently) said to make use of Claude AI (by Anthropic). Amazon decided to use a third-party AI to fulfill the task since it offered better overall performance compared to what it was trying to accomplish on its own. However, the company will likely push to move things to its own AI models in the future.
At this time, there is still no hard information from Amazon on whether this will require new hardware or not. If this does become a requirement, users will have to upgrade their echo speakers with whatever solutions Amazon releases at that time. While the regular Amazon Alexa experience will continue to work in its current state on previous Echo devices.
The hardest thing to swallow for some consumers will be the fact that the company plans on charging a monthly fee for the use of the upgraded AI experience. So the potential requirement to upgrade your devices may not be the only cost associated. Amazon has mentioned that it was leaning toward a $5-$10 a month subscription cost that would likely be associated.
All of this comes to light soon after Google recently announced that it had planned to roll out its AI experience for Google Nest devices by the end of the year. It hasn’t shared an exact date just yet, but this likely lit a fire under Amazon’s efforts, pushing for it to roll things out within the same window. Especially, as the holiday season slowly makes its way closer.
