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Amazon plans to charge for Alexa in June—unless internal conflict delays revamp

Report claims Amazon is struggling to build a subscription version of Alexa.

“If this fails to get revenue, Alexa is in trouble.”

A quote from an anonymous Amazon employee in a Wednesday Business Insider report paints a dire picture. Amazon needs its upcoming subscription version of Alexa to drive revenue in ways that its voice assistant never has before.

Amazon declined Ars' request for comment on the report. But the opening quote in this article could have been uttered by anyone following voice assistants for the past year-plus. All voice assistants have struggled to drive revenue since people tend to use voice assistants for basic queries, like checking the weather, rather than transactions.

Amazon announced plans to drive usage and interest in Alexa by releasing a generative AI version that it said would one day require a subscription.

This leads to the question: Would you pay to use Alexa? Amazon will be challenged to convince people to change how they use Alexa while suddenly paying a monthly rate to enable that unprecedented behavior.

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