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Recently, Amazon announced that its voice assistant Alexa has officially connected to the big model and launched a new version of the feature called Alexa+. This update makes Alexa not only a smart speaker, but also an important step towards the diversified development of smart assistants.
Alexa+ subscription costs $19.99 per month, but Amazon Prime members are free to use. Amazon Prime membership is $119 annually and enjoys a variety of services including video and music streaming. Alexa+ will begin trials for US users in early March, a change that marks Alexa's greater user experience focus and strives to be "your best new friend in the digital world."
Image source: Alexa
In the past, Alexa was often regarded as an "old object" by the outside world and seemed to be struggling in the rapidly developing AI market. However, Alexa's capabilities will be significantly improved upon access to the big model, which not only allows for more complex conversations, but also performs physical operations such as booking and shopping. Alexa will use Anthropic's Claude model and its self-developed Nova model to achieve multimodal interaction capabilities.
Through newly released apps and websites, users can talk to Alexa, get writing help, and even generate pictures, and are no longer limited to traditional smart speakers. Alexa+'s memory ability is also worth paying attention to, it can remember users' preferences and provide users with personalized suggestions and services.
Although Alexa has led the trend in the smart speaker market, Alexa's market share has gradually been eroded with the rise of competitors such as Google Assistant and Siri. Although Alexa has sold 600 million units of equipment worldwide, its team suffered huge losses in 2022. With this transformation and upgrading, Amazon hopes to turn the situation around with the help of Alexa +, reduce losses and attract more users.
Although the road ahead is still challenging, Alexa+ demonstrates its potential to reshape the AI assistant market by introducing big model technology. Amazon hopes to bring more paid users to Alexa+ with its own e-commerce platform and Prime membership system and promote the rise of smart speakers again.
