- Amazon is set to launch an upgraded version of Alexa, which will include new features like Smart Briefing for personalized AI news summaries and a kid-friendly chatbot, in October 2024.
- Unlike the current free version, the new Alexa may cost up to $10 per month. The existing “classic Alexa” will continue to be free.
- It appears that Amazon might also introduce “Project Metis,” a chatbot similar to ChatGPT, in the near future.
We first heard of Amazon’s Alexa overhaul in September 2023, at a time when OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard (which has now been replaced by Gemini) were leading the way in terms of conversational AI. Now, nearly a year later, we finally have a timeline for when this new Alexa will be rolled out. According to certain documents obtained by The Washington Post, the retailer will launch the upgraded Alexa in October of this year.
Unlike the current version of Alexa, Amazon’s upgraded voice assistant is expected to cost as much as $10 per month. The price may be justified, though, since the new Alexa is designed to offer a far more personalized experience. Case in point, the upgraded Alexa will allegedly include a Smart Briefing feature that will provide AI news summaries of topics that interest the user.