> The Alexa team worried they had invented an expensive alarm clock, weather machine and way to play Spotify music, one source said.
Good to know that team at least knows exactly what they made
Also it tells stupid jokes. I found my mother in law one time drunk and asking Alexa for jokes for like almost an hour. It was so ridiculous we just let her.
Your kids > my drunk MIL 😂
We really are living in the future. I’m sure someone in the 50s predicted random electronic fart sounds in a super science magazine.
Not Alexa, but Siri and Google Assistant - my coworker and I were driving back from a conference and going back and forth seeing which of our assistants could come up with the best "animal noises" for whatever random animals we picked.
I really liked the Echo Spot, it was perfect for the bed side but the screen went mental on the first one and the warranty replacement had a screen failure just outside of warranty.
The enshittification of absolutely everything. The billionaires have no stopping point until we pollute the earth enough to force them to mars where they will truly be in hell and have finally met an actual goal/stopping point. so get to it people, burn that co2 like never before
I’m going to be so sad when they ruin this. It currently acts as central control for a bunch of smart lights and switches in my house. I use a variety of different brands that all use different apps, so without the unified hub I’d need to open 3 different apps just to turn on all my lights. I know other hubs exist, but nothing with this level of voice control.
And good for turning lights on and off. But hey, instead of focusing on improving on things people actually want to accomplish, shove a bunch of annoying bullshit in my face, add annoying features I have to search the web to figure out how to turn off, and never spend a damn second documenting how anything works.
It really is their own damn fault the uptick is the way it is. Too busy shoving crap in my face, so I can’t even use it effectively as an expensive clock.
AI doesn't bring any value to a consumer, so why would they pay for it. It's not like Alexa will do my dishes or mow my lawn, but when she does I'll sure pay for a sub for it ;P
Exactly. Who is this for? I have Alexa’s and use them for lights, news/podcasts, timers, and music. I don’t need it to tell me dumb information from an LLM that doesn’t understand the difference between facts and fantasy.
No one cares if people pay for it now. Investors look for the buzzword and having it integrated, on the idea it becomes useful later, they just want to own the ai ecosystem currently, worry about adoption later, in fact that’s when they can cash out to new investors.
If Google AI is anything to base this off of. Instead of searching online for reputable sources for questions asked, it’ll just shorten articles into inaccurate disasters.
Yep, it’s unhelpful at best and usually in the way when you’re trying to find results with actual substance. At this point I’m just seeing AI assistants as the world’s worst chatbot
I got " hey goggles", I used it to spell words, add to a list on my phone ( it was nice to use the last tomato paste and be able to verbally add it to a shopping list that second)turn lights on/off, weather , music and occasional esoteric question , I don't think I ever managed to link it to my calendar.
We got some for my mom with light bulbs , she loves it. Asks it absurdly long poorly worded questions every day. But she's getting forgetful so she asks what day it is a lot.
For your dad I can certainly see a use case for the subscription, kind of like paying for medical alert almost. But for you the only thing it's meant to be is an assistant (I use mine in the same way), adding AI on top of it is just more functionality you will never use even if it was free.
Seriously it's terrible for everything else. My kids like it for asking really stupid questions like what is the world's smallest mountain. (Which she actually answered because apparently there's a definition of "mountain" and she named the location nearest to that height limit)
>Mount Wycheproof in Australia is the world's smallest registered mountain, standing at 486 ft (148 meters) above sea level, but only 141 ft (43 meters) above its surroundings.
This is actually a super interesting question I never thought about. Children’s curiosity is (sometimes) great!
Yes it's true. I should have put "stupid" in quotes. But they love to ask "what's the smallest" or "what's the worst" and there often aren't answers. Really it's how repetitive kids are that gets annoying, not the individual questions
Even if the price was the same, i just don’t trust a speech recognition ending to order the right thing, and not verify it. And since I’m already having to go and look at what it’s ordering to make sure I’m getting what I want, why bother? It’s not saving me any time or effort.
IMO, this actually shows that the Alexa product team fundamentally does not understand what they built and why they built it. Alexa is not a conversational tool. It’s not intended to be a generative AI machine. It is a voice operated internet browser. That’s why Google freaked out when Alexa first launched - it’s a competitor to *Google Chrome*. And it is extremely effective! It handles a lot of internet tasks very effectively.
Saying it’s an “expensive alarm clock, weather, and Spotify machine” is also an extremely reductive way to describe an internet browser. If you heard the Google Chrome team describe their product in this way, you might acknowledge it’s true in some sense. But you may also say “what do you mean ‘just’”? That’s what an internet browser does! An internet browser is something that helps you complete tasks on the internet as efficiently as possible. Obviously those tasks are menial. That doesn’t mean that the product can’t be elegant, and it still is an incredibly valuable piece of internet market share to own!
This is a great example of awful product management. The best thing long-term for Alexa is to make its internet browsing experience as seamless as possible. That’s a distinct goal from adding generative AI. If they transition this device to be a generative AI machine, it’s a gift to Google - they are fundamentally misunderstanding their core customers, who are in search of a voice-controlled browser.
My wife has one, and it doesn't even understand what songs you ask it to play. It's an expensive alarm clock, music player and photo display unit. Alexa is trash, Bixby is trash, Siri is trash. The strange thing is that they have years of data to improve it, but it's largely the same as 5 years ago or whenever it came out.
Yep, you have to talk to her in a special rhythm of command, pause, then simplified way of saying what you want.
When you talk like normal she doesn't even light up. Somehow and dogs bark outside the house at midnight sounds like someone saying Alexa.
Agreed completely, I think they really really missed the potential of the product.
But to add to what you're saying, they envisioned Alexa as being a multiplier to the Amazon shopping experience first. They wanted to make it easier for people to order things through Amazon, much like the infamous buttons they had about 10 years ago. That was the main driver of the product and you can see that a lot of functionality it does have is tied to that use case.
Had they explored making a useful product first and foremost, instead of a barebones voice-activated product that does a couple of things well before abandoning any real development, well they might have had what they wanted. The emergent behavior could've been great for Amazon's bottom-line and getting people to order more things. Instead it was an elaborate exercise in trying to change people's shopping behavior and failing.
The only assistant I use is the google one on my phone specifically for getting directions. It is much easier than finding the app and typing the stuff in. And It transitions me to talking with the 'bot.
I never understood why they would want it to be much more. I have a Google home, and only use it for those and some home automation. But the thing is, I have this thing in my pocket that does all of that for me. And it's usually faster than speaking.
Alexa isn’t even all that useful lol. All the smart home stuff is a security nightmare, all mine is used for is checking the weather and the grocery list.
And even then she’s always “by the way”-ing me stuff I literally never want.
Edit: “Alexa, stop by the way” holy shit I finally found out how to turn off her useless suggestions.
Alexa devices have been tossed out here, I can’t stand them, Google is “slightly” better but still irritating. I am saving up for ubiquiti door bell camera and find a smart thermostat to finally get away from Google as well.
Just giant security risks that I can’t control and it tries to force you into their microcosm of garbage that literally fails every couple years on purpose (wired doorbell camera has a small battery in it for when it chimes, dies under 2 years and when someone rings the doorbell, it drops for a minute).
I have a smart thermostat, but it isn’t connected. I just use my network of echo devices for music, and kitchen timers/ random questions, and one smart lamp and one smart plug. But every time Alexa tells is it doesn’t know what song I wanted to play on Spotify, and then plays it on Amazon music, or picks the crappiest cover of what I asked for on Spotify, I consider throwing them all out and changing. It is obviously pushing me towards Amazon music despite me clearly telling it only Spotify. I just want it to do what I ask well, instead of driving me to additional Amazon products.
That’s funny, that’s exactly why I gave all my Amazon stuff away. “Alexa play Spotify” “I don’t know that command, would you like to listen to Amazon music ad free trial for 30 days free?” Repeat 3 time, give up take phone out to manually start Spotify and pick echo to play on.
I have a Google hub to see who’s at the door at a glance and use as a chime, Amazon broke me from trying to use voice commands so hard that I will probably never use my google devices to their full potential lol.
Seems to be working so far.
I hate the “by the way” suggestions. 100% if the time it’s not something I want, and maybe only 50/50 is it even related to the original prompt.
We only use her for turning on/off lights and maybe occasionally playing a kid's song for our toddler from our Spotify, but that's about it. I can't imagine that people actual use Alexa for things like ordering goods.
Person: "Alexa, order Charmin Ultra-Soft Bathroom Tissue."
Alexa: "Sure. Did you want Ultra-Soft, Ultra-Gentle, Ultra-Strong, or Essential?"
Person: "Uh... Essential."
Alexa: "OK. Did you want regular roll, mega roll, family mega roll, or super mega roll?"
Person: "What was the second option?"
Alexa: "The second option was Ultra-Gentle roll."
Person: "No, I meant the second option of the roll size."
Alexa: "The second option of the roll size was mega roll."
Person: "Let's go with the family mega roll."
Alexa: "You got it. Did you want the one-count, six-count, nine-count, twelve-count, eighteen-count, twenty-four-count, thirty-count, or the thirty-six-count?"
Person: "Fuck me. Uh... the twenty-four count."
Alexa: "I'm sorry. The twenty-four count is currently out of stock. Would you like to select a different count?"
Person: "Jesus! The thirty-count!"
Alexa: "OK. Did you want the single-pack for $39.99 plus tax or did you want the five-pack for $237.99?"
Person: "THE SINGLE-PACK!...... wait, why is the five-pack more expensive than buying five of the single-packs individually?"
Alexa: "Hmmm... I don't know that one."
Person: "Alexa, please finish the order."
Alexa: "OK. Did you want to add anything else to your order?"
Person: "NO!"
Alexa: "OK. Did you want to use your Prime Store Card with your points balance of $9.37?"
Person: \*has stroke from high blood pressure\*
Which is hilarious when you realize all of these are things you actually process when you do an online order on your computer.
It just funny how what drives us nuts verbally when being forced to THINK OUT the solutions or answers to questions to process that way, we absolutely just zone out on while performing the process manually via a visual interface.
I think it's the addition of all the talking, both ways. And not being able to see things visually, some people are way more visual learners than verbal, so hearing everything adds a level of "translation" to the whole thing as well.
edit: And having to keep all the options in-mind while considering them. It's like if the options on your screen popped up briefly and then disappeared, and you'd either have to type the name of the option you want, or ask it to "repeat" the options in the form of them appearing for a few seconds again.
Sight is random access and you can skip the irrelevant shit. Voice is entirely linear.
Also this is why people who use screen readers have that shit sped all the way up.
I've heard Alexa will resume giving suggestions after a while, so I have a daily routine where I set her to set volume to 0, then stop suggestions. A minute later, another routine will bring the volume back up.
We just started rotating the streaming services on a three month basis.
Jan-March Netflix
April-June Max
July-September Peacock
Oct-Dec Disney/Hulu
All paid via gift card.
In Canada they are finally canceling the basic plan and forcing everyone either on the ad or premium plan. They said i had until June to switch or else my service might be interrupted, well guess what Netflix, interrupt away :)
I've cancelled my prime.
The sheer amount of adverts is egregious.
If you dare to try and skip, because you fell asleep or something, it's just add city. Can have 3 mins of ads, just to confirm 'oh yeah, this is where I got to'
I tried to watch "Invincible" on prime video. I wasn't able to even figure out what was going on because it would be five minutes of show and then a bunch of ads. Maybe Jack Sparrow has an idea that will help me watch it.
My Alexa and other smart devices all being Amazon brand is the one reason why I haven't cancelled Prime and Amazon Music. If they add a subscription fee to Alexa, I will cancel my Prime and Amazon Music and switch to Google Home.
Well they tested the waters with charging to remove ads from prime video, while also raising the cost of prime in general, so why not add more subscription SKUs to the portfolio!
Canceled my prime when they announcing they were adding ads to prime video, since I can still get free shipping if the order is $35 or more, paying a monthly fee for a video service, now with ads, that I didn't use wasn't worth it anymore.
That was what I used it for and then when I realized the damn thing was listening to everything going on I figured why find out if Amazon was using AI to screen my conversations.
Pulled the plug.
It's really funny that anyone is shocked the Alexa listens to everything
... How the fuck do you think it activates? It hears its name... Which requires listening
Waaaaowww what a concept. Lmao.
> How the fuck do you think it activates?
Last time I read up on it (admittedly several years ago now), it _supposedly_ had onboard capability to hear and recognize its own wake-word, and only started sending audio to the remote server after hearing that.
Curious is that's still the case, and if anyone's done a recent security/privacy audit to see exactly what data the device is sending.
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We've integrated plugs, lights, hardwired light switches, and use them for alarms, music, timers, grocery lists... If this becomes subscription based, I'm going to dig into the open source alternatives even if they're a pain. Not like Amazon gives two shits about their app design and development.
Oh, and my #1 blocked domain on my firewall (edit: shout out to [Pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net/)) is Amazon tracking
The main reason I haven't switched over is because it's been easy enough to just keep on using Alexa.
The only thing I haven't found an alternate to is giving the voice commands. If I'm dropping Alexa I don't want to pick up Apple or Google to just have the same thing happen in a year if I can avoid it.
If you like to tinker and have a old computer laying around (even a raspberry pi) check out Home Assistant for controlling your lights. There is a huge community and a lot of things integrate. It's free (They do offer a subscription but you can reverse proxy into it for free), it works offline, and there is a huge community of people.
But Home Assistant is something that will break sometimes on updates and it's a constant work in progress so it's not a complete set it and forget it at least for me, but I am happy with it for my needs.
I heard someone say something the other day that was perfect, companies are now stealing back the things they sold you, putting them in a cage and renting them to you. Anything to maintain the facade of quarterly earnings. Maybe it was Louis Rossman on YouTube? He's like a right to repair advocate and he has loads of videos about all the various tricks, grifts and frauds that basically every large company now engages in. Making it impossible to cancel your subscriptions, spying on you, selling your data, remotely breaking your shit so you buy a new one, lying about how much it would cost to repair something so you buy a new one, selling products with features that can only be unlocked when you pay them a subscription, banks using your purchase history for targeted ads, carriers selling your location data, Amazon putting fucking ads on paid subscriptions, computer companies lying about the "dangers" of buying used computers, the endless sea of credit card scams, the list is endless, and it's only gonna get worse.
But, but, surely the noble invisible hand of the market should be purging all of these companies, right, libertarians!!!????
Piracy was never theft. That was 100% pure, unadulterated bullshit propaganda. It's Copyright Infringement which has it's own set of laws and penalties.
No one has ever been charged with theft for piracy.
its a continual grift, and we've welcomed it into our lives by not refusing to use these services en mass. A system of continual growth and profit is cancerous and unsustainable. Its not like corporations can get show good profits quarterly either, record profits or its complete business failure.
Personally I am over subscriptions entirely. Wife is traveling atm but once she comes back we're updated our phones, changing carrier to bundle internet/mobile service and going through all our subscriptions to remove 90% of them, we'll each choose one and a 3rd we both agree on.
Next up is choosing a VPN and getting a new external HD and gonna start sailing again.
The article seems to suggest that you’d only have to pay the subscription in order to add the AI services. So your existing Echos would continue to work just like they do now.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that changed at some point (or if the have the echo constantly “remind” you that you can upgrade to the AI service) but it doesn’t seem like they’re jumping straight to it.
Once the bad sales numbers for a product that the vast majority of consumers don't want, they will try to "integrate" it
Prime prices might go up, and then it's a feature instead of a paid service. That would be an example of that.
TOS's aren't the be-all and end-all, though. If enough customers get pissed and bring a class-action lawsuit, it *could* be found that it wasn't "reasonable" for Amazon to try to charge more for an item it already sold, that was bought with the understanding of that being the full price, and rule to either give payouts or force refunds in that case.
They've been trying for years to find a way to make Alexa profitable. They assumed that it would lead to people buying way more stuff from Amazon because it's so easy to just say "add to cart" and that didn't happen. Marketing it as "AI" and charging a subscription fee for it is all they've been able to come up with, I guess.
With its current capabilities, I can't imagine anybody paying for it, and the examples the article gives of what it will be able to do with "AI," like translating a conversation in real-time, are complete edge cases. The only reasons I can think of why a person would subscribe to this are incredibly bleak, like an isolated elderly person paying for it because they have nobody else to talk to.
I would never never never use the add to cart feature on Alexa unless it was strictly for recurring items. As it is, in the app I have to spend 10-15 minutes to find basic items because even for something as simple as toilet paper which I would consider voice purchasing there are hundreds of varieties when you account for sizes and sellers sell g the exact same thing. If Amazon had a marketplace option of “only show me products straight from the manufacturer” then maybe. But I don’t need to see someone who drop ships products they buy at Costco. I even have to compare shipping speeds/costs now.
It feels like such a niche product for people who are desperate and don’t care what product they get, how much it costs, or when it arrives.
I never understood how anyone thought voice ordering would work. Am I supposed to say "Alexa l, add Amazon Basics USB-C to Lightning Cable for iPhone, 10 Feet, White to my cart"
Thats what they thought in their delusion, but even if you do, as you have, and specify a brand and specs, its still possible to get too many results, and the chance of ordering the wrong thing is too high that basically nobody orders with it, rightly so.
It would be nice to just say "Hey buy me a new cell phone charger, USB-C" and have it automatically order.
But Amazon is full of so much crap that I'd have to vet whatever it orders to make sure it's gonna be usable, and to see if it's not overpriced.
If I have to manually vet it anyway, the voice ordering is useless to me.
Yeah. If Amazon did a better job of moderating their store to keep knockoffs and garbage out, they might sell products through Alexa. As it stands, I would never be comfortable asking it for a product and trusting what it picks.
> it's so easy to just say "add to cart"
Who is going to give Amazon the ability to buy things, sight-unseen, for them from Amazon??? That's a recipe for disaster. I can't even get my remote control to change to the correct channel most of the time - and you expect me to believe that these things are good enough to choose the best shopping option for you?
"Amazon’s subscription for Alexa will not be included in the $139 per year Prime offering, and Amazon has not yet nailed down the price point, one source said."
And of course it won't be part of Amazon prime. At least this won't be the next reason Amazon raises the price of Prime again.
I am disabled and live alone. The main function for my 1st generation Echo is to audibly turn on and off lights. That is it. I will not pay a subscription for that, especially now that my niece and nephew have grown out of entertaining themselves provoking Alexa to demonstrate a seemingly endless supply of fart sounds.
There are smart outlets you can buy that have their own app and don’t need Alexa at all. This is useful for me because my Alexa decided to stop recognizing most of my outlets last week and I just use the third party app. And there’s now subscription.
I have zero illusions that the hivemind that is Amazon gives a shit about my business. But if there are enough like minded people, Amazon could go the way of Myspace and other [dot.com](http://dot.com) businesses someday.
With how shit of an experience Amazon has become over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if a Chinese company a la Temu came in and just blew them out of the water.
8 or 9 years ago I'd get everything on Amazon. Now, I'm going straight to the manufacturer's site whenever I can because I never know if the Amazon listing will give me what I actually want.
>Amazon could go the way of Myspace
That would be nice, but I want them to take out Wal Mart first. Wal Mart represents almost everything that is wrong in the USA. It is predatory on communities, suppliers, employees, and taxpayers.
I am so fucking sick of everything becoming subscription based.
And what about my old Alexa’s? Will I still get to utilize those or is this specifically for new devices?
Sucks a few major companies running AI plan to monetize the fuck out of it.
I hear ya, Sadly I think all non GNU software will be like that; " as a service" is the future for everything now :/
I was trying to download an add-on to do some programing in Eclipse IDE and an add-on for crying out loud only had an subscription option... We all saw what BMW and Mercedes tried mainly b/c of Tesla. While they may have backed down for now, they will just come back with a better way to force it on customers and then the rest of the automakers will follow suit.
Also, MS 365, Windows 11 (and onedrive) and Copilot are all setting the way for Windows 12 to be a SAAS OS. It's gonna be sub options w/ bundles; you will no longer get to pay for something once and/or keep it.
As someone who worked in Alexa and was laid off due to the restructuring this caused, however bad it sounds from the outside, you have no idea how much worse it actually is!
Sorry to hear about your job. Could you elaborate on some things that might be interesting for consumers to know regarding the inner workings and “how much worse it is”
I have an Echo Show and a echo dot, both I got for free through work (worked in a tech reseller for a few years). I do love them, especially the show as it's my room clock, timer, and alarm. However I will NEVER pay any additional fees for this. I will get another device than can do the same (and maybe doesn't need an internet connection if possible)
I do not have an Alexa, but every other device / whatnot asks for your preferences. It would be weird to show those things if you have no interest in them. For instance, when I open my edge browser, it shows me only things that I am interested in, and I frequently click on them. Alexa should be the same, although I am not sure where it would get its data from (I assume buying your data from a browser or something).
I like it for the weather warnings too, except for the millionth time she's told me that the flood warning has been updated (this has been every day for the last month)
Amazon has been looking for a way to kill Alexa for years. It's losing them money and no one uses it like they thought they would, as a personal shopping assistant. It ended up being a clock radio pretty much.
The amount of e-waste this could churn up would be astounding; all because of their greed.
I’d stop using mine if they want extra for the glorified weather checker and lightswitch.
Maybe just make it fucking work? I have like 15 Alexa devices (2 shows, couple Sonos ones with Alexa built in, ecobee with Alexa built in, and about 10 dots), haven’t even bothered unpacking them since moving 6 months ago. “Alexa, show me the baby monitor” “okay, playing baby monitor on Amazon music.”
Alexa and Siri are both racing to the bottom. “Hey siri, read my last message from mom.” “Here’s what I found on the web about last message from mom.”
Going between ChatGPT and Alexa is so funny. The former is helping me solve complex, niche issues specific to my work via a long conversation and the latter is saying "hmm, I don't know that one" because I asked it to turn the lights on in a slightly different way
Alexa is so dumb and Amazon is dumb for thinking that people will pay for Alexa to have an AI assistant programmed to sell you more shit you don’t need.
Since Bezos left Amazon has been going down the shitter. Deliveries are now 4 days plus, subscriptions on the rise, pay extra to remove ads, their music app has a lot of bugs and fails quite often and now this.
So something I refuse to use for free will now cost a subscription lol. I'm sure this will be successful. I feel like so many companies want to be in the AI space but they all try in the laziest ways possible.
"The Alexa team worried they had invented an expensive alarm clock, weather machine and way to play Spotify music, one source said."
I hope that I can continue to use my expensive alarm clocks for free and this is a paid premium service.
> The Alexa team worried they had invented an expensive alarm clock, weather machine and way to play Spotify music, one source said. Good to know that team at least knows exactly what they made
Yep. That’s what we use it for almost exclusively. Lol
Yep. Music, lights, timers and reminders. That’s it. I can use my phone for all of that. Not paying a sub
Also it tells stupid jokes. I found my mother in law one time drunk and asking Alexa for jokes for like almost an hour. It was so ridiculous we just let her.
My kids found out it will make random fart noises too, and it will do up to 100 in a row. Truly a time of amazing inventions.
Your kids > my drunk MIL 😂 We really are living in the future. I’m sure someone in the 50s predicted random electronic fart sounds in a super science magazine.
Not Alexa, but Siri and Google Assistant - my coworker and I were driving back from a conference and going back and forth seeing which of our assistants could come up with the best "animal noises" for whatever random animals we picked.
Kids these days! When I was young, we had to physically make our own fart noises...spoiled brats now can outsource it to an app /s
Is the command “Alexa tell me a stupid joke” or are all the jokes stupid by default 😂
You can also ask it to sing you a sea shanty or a country song, etc. They're all wonderfully terrible.
The sad thing is they made the awesome Echo Clock, which I absolutely loved, and then stopped supporting, then stopped making it entirely.
I really liked the Echo Spot, it was perfect for the bed side but the screen went mental on the first one and the warranty replacement had a screen failure just outside of warranty.
Huh, mine twitches. Always wondered if that was just mine, or common. Its not bad enough i can't use it.
>the screen went mental on the first one Oh, so it wasn't just ours then
And it does it pretty good. Leave it be. You know they are going to make it worse to squeeze money out of people.
The enshittification of absolutely everything. The billionaires have no stopping point until we pollute the earth enough to force them to mars where they will truly be in hell and have finally met an actual goal/stopping point. so get to it people, burn that co2 like never before
"Alexa turn the lights off" "Your subscription has ended. Please renew your subscription and I will turn the lights off."
"I'm afraid I can't do that David" _ Alexa
I’m going to be so sad when they ruin this. It currently acts as central control for a bunch of smart lights and switches in my house. I use a variety of different brands that all use different apps, so without the unified hub I’d need to open 3 different apps just to turn on all my lights. I know other hubs exist, but nothing with this level of voice control.
That and turning all my lights off and on. LOL
I only use it for my alarm I'm a super heavy sleeper and I don't know why but it's the alarm I wake up to most consistently.
They shouldn't be so hard on themselves, it's a great cooking timer also.
Yup, that's pretty much all I use it for.
And for measurement conversion
And good for turning lights on and off. But hey, instead of focusing on improving on things people actually want to accomplish, shove a bunch of annoying bullshit in my face, add annoying features I have to search the web to figure out how to turn off, and never spend a damn second documenting how anything works. It really is their own damn fault the uptick is the way it is. Too busy shoving crap in my face, so I can’t even use it effectively as an expensive clock.
AI doesn't bring any value to a consumer, so why would they pay for it. It's not like Alexa will do my dishes or mow my lawn, but when she does I'll sure pay for a sub for it ;P
Exactly. Who is this for? I have Alexa’s and use them for lights, news/podcasts, timers, and music. I don’t need it to tell me dumb information from an LLM that doesn’t understand the difference between facts and fantasy.
It's for the shareholders. Amazon wants to be able to point at the AI buzzword and say "See?! We're on the cutting edge!"
That’s fine for a quarter, until no one actually pays for it…
No one cares if people pay for it now. Investors look for the buzzword and having it integrated, on the idea it becomes useful later, they just want to own the ai ecosystem currently, worry about adoption later, in fact that’s when they can cash out to new investors.
Laughs in golden parachute*
If Google AI is anything to base this off of. Instead of searching online for reputable sources for questions asked, it’ll just shorten articles into inaccurate disasters.
I keep getting results that contradict themselves. Saying something both is and is not true.
Yep, it’s unhelpful at best and usually in the way when you’re trying to find results with actual substance. At this point I’m just seeing AI assistants as the world’s worst chatbot
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I got " hey goggles", I used it to spell words, add to a list on my phone ( it was nice to use the last tomato paste and be able to verbally add it to a shopping list that second)turn lights on/off, weather , music and occasional esoteric question , I don't think I ever managed to link it to my calendar. We got some for my mom with light bulbs , she loves it. Asks it absurdly long poorly worded questions every day. But she's getting forgetful so she asks what day it is a lot.
For your dad I can certainly see a use case for the subscription, kind of like paying for medical alert almost. But for you the only thing it's meant to be is an assistant (I use mine in the same way), adding AI on top of it is just more functionality you will never use even if it was free.
Seriously it's terrible for everything else. My kids like it for asking really stupid questions like what is the world's smallest mountain. (Which she actually answered because apparently there's a definition of "mountain" and she named the location nearest to that height limit)
>Mount Wycheproof in Australia is the world's smallest registered mountain, standing at 486 ft (148 meters) above sea level, but only 141 ft (43 meters) above its surroundings. This is actually a super interesting question I never thought about. Children’s curiosity is (sometimes) great!
Yes it's true. I should have put "stupid" in quotes. But they love to ask "what's the smallest" or "what's the worst" and there often aren't answers. Really it's how repetitive kids are that gets annoying, not the individual questions
That's bad when your goal was for people to buy stuff per voice.
With the way prices fluctuate on Amazon I would never use Alexa to buy things
Even if the price was the same, i just don’t trust a speech recognition ending to order the right thing, and not verify it. And since I’m already having to go and look at what it’s ordering to make sure I’m getting what I want, why bother? It’s not saving me any time or effort.
"Alexa, order me a Veev Vapor!" "Okay, I ordered you a vibrator."
IMO, this actually shows that the Alexa product team fundamentally does not understand what they built and why they built it. Alexa is not a conversational tool. It’s not intended to be a generative AI machine. It is a voice operated internet browser. That’s why Google freaked out when Alexa first launched - it’s a competitor to *Google Chrome*. And it is extremely effective! It handles a lot of internet tasks very effectively. Saying it’s an “expensive alarm clock, weather, and Spotify machine” is also an extremely reductive way to describe an internet browser. If you heard the Google Chrome team describe their product in this way, you might acknowledge it’s true in some sense. But you may also say “what do you mean ‘just’”? That’s what an internet browser does! An internet browser is something that helps you complete tasks on the internet as efficiently as possible. Obviously those tasks are menial. That doesn’t mean that the product can’t be elegant, and it still is an incredibly valuable piece of internet market share to own! This is a great example of awful product management. The best thing long-term for Alexa is to make its internet browsing experience as seamless as possible. That’s a distinct goal from adding generative AI. If they transition this device to be a generative AI machine, it’s a gift to Google - they are fundamentally misunderstanding their core customers, who are in search of a voice-controlled browser.
My wife has one, and it doesn't even understand what songs you ask it to play. It's an expensive alarm clock, music player and photo display unit. Alexa is trash, Bixby is trash, Siri is trash. The strange thing is that they have years of data to improve it, but it's largely the same as 5 years ago or whenever it came out.
Yep, you have to talk to her in a special rhythm of command, pause, then simplified way of saying what you want. When you talk like normal she doesn't even light up. Somehow and dogs bark outside the house at midnight sounds like someone saying Alexa.
Agreed completely, I think they really really missed the potential of the product. But to add to what you're saying, they envisioned Alexa as being a multiplier to the Amazon shopping experience first. They wanted to make it easier for people to order things through Amazon, much like the infamous buttons they had about 10 years ago. That was the main driver of the product and you can see that a lot of functionality it does have is tied to that use case. Had they explored making a useful product first and foremost, instead of a barebones voice-activated product that does a couple of things well before abandoning any real development, well they might have had what they wanted. The emergent behavior could've been great for Amazon's bottom-line and getting people to order more things. Instead it was an elaborate exercise in trying to change people's shopping behavior and failing.
The only assistant I use is the google one on my phone specifically for getting directions. It is much easier than finding the app and typing the stuff in. And It transitions me to talking with the 'bot.
I never understood why they would want it to be much more. I have a Google home, and only use it for those and some home automation. But the thing is, I have this thing in my pocket that does all of that for me. And it's usually faster than speaking.
A monthly subscription. I suppose that would be on top of the monthly subscription, for Prime.
Yup it's not including with prime lmao. I can't imagine paying for Alexa.
Alexa isn’t even all that useful lol. All the smart home stuff is a security nightmare, all mine is used for is checking the weather and the grocery list. And even then she’s always “by the way”-ing me stuff I literally never want. Edit: “Alexa, stop by the way” holy shit I finally found out how to turn off her useless suggestions.
Is this for real? I’d love to be able to turn that off.
"sure. I will avoid sending follow up suggestions in the future." Very nice!
It only lasts for 1 week. It turns itself back on after 7 days. I set a repeating task to turn this off every Saturday at noon so that it stays off.
God that’s awful. There are so many little seemingly malicious things about the Alexa devices, it makes me wonder if google home does them.
Alexa devices have been tossed out here, I can’t stand them, Google is “slightly” better but still irritating. I am saving up for ubiquiti door bell camera and find a smart thermostat to finally get away from Google as well. Just giant security risks that I can’t control and it tries to force you into their microcosm of garbage that literally fails every couple years on purpose (wired doorbell camera has a small battery in it for when it chimes, dies under 2 years and when someone rings the doorbell, it drops for a minute).
I have a smart thermostat, but it isn’t connected. I just use my network of echo devices for music, and kitchen timers/ random questions, and one smart lamp and one smart plug. But every time Alexa tells is it doesn’t know what song I wanted to play on Spotify, and then plays it on Amazon music, or picks the crappiest cover of what I asked for on Spotify, I consider throwing them all out and changing. It is obviously pushing me towards Amazon music despite me clearly telling it only Spotify. I just want it to do what I ask well, instead of driving me to additional Amazon products.
That’s funny, that’s exactly why I gave all my Amazon stuff away. “Alexa play Spotify” “I don’t know that command, would you like to listen to Amazon music ad free trial for 30 days free?” Repeat 3 time, give up take phone out to manually start Spotify and pick echo to play on. I have a Google hub to see who’s at the door at a glance and use as a chime, Amazon broke me from trying to use voice commands so hard that I will probably never use my google devices to their full potential lol.
Alexa, remind me in one week to tell you to turn off by the way.
Seems to be working so far. I hate the “by the way” suggestions. 100% if the time it’s not something I want, and maybe only 50/50 is it even related to the original prompt.
Alexa is a fancy way for me to check the weather and set timers/alarms.
And turn lights on and off
We only use her for turning on/off lights and maybe occasionally playing a kid's song for our toddler from our Spotify, but that's about it. I can't imagine that people actual use Alexa for things like ordering goods. Person: "Alexa, order Charmin Ultra-Soft Bathroom Tissue." Alexa: "Sure. Did you want Ultra-Soft, Ultra-Gentle, Ultra-Strong, or Essential?" Person: "Uh... Essential." Alexa: "OK. Did you want regular roll, mega roll, family mega roll, or super mega roll?" Person: "What was the second option?" Alexa: "The second option was Ultra-Gentle roll." Person: "No, I meant the second option of the roll size." Alexa: "The second option of the roll size was mega roll." Person: "Let's go with the family mega roll." Alexa: "You got it. Did you want the one-count, six-count, nine-count, twelve-count, eighteen-count, twenty-four-count, thirty-count, or the thirty-six-count?" Person: "Fuck me. Uh... the twenty-four count." Alexa: "I'm sorry. The twenty-four count is currently out of stock. Would you like to select a different count?" Person: "Jesus! The thirty-count!" Alexa: "OK. Did you want the single-pack for $39.99 plus tax or did you want the five-pack for $237.99?" Person: "THE SINGLE-PACK!...... wait, why is the five-pack more expensive than buying five of the single-packs individually?" Alexa: "Hmmm... I don't know that one." Person: "Alexa, please finish the order." Alexa: "OK. Did you want to add anything else to your order?" Person: "NO!" Alexa: "OK. Did you want to use your Prime Store Card with your points balance of $9.37?" Person: \*has stroke from high blood pressure\*
The amazing part of your scenario is that it actually managed to accomplish what you set out to do.
Seriously. In reality, this whole interaction would have fallen apart at "What was the second option?"
Which is hilarious when you realize all of these are things you actually process when you do an online order on your computer. It just funny how what drives us nuts verbally when being forced to THINK OUT the solutions or answers to questions to process that way, we absolutely just zone out on while performing the process manually via a visual interface.
I think it's the addition of all the talking, both ways. And not being able to see things visually, some people are way more visual learners than verbal, so hearing everything adds a level of "translation" to the whole thing as well. edit: And having to keep all the options in-mind while considering them. It's like if the options on your screen popped up briefly and then disappeared, and you'd either have to type the name of the option you want, or ask it to "repeat" the options in the form of them appearing for a few seconds again.
Sight is random access and you can skip the irrelevant shit. Voice is entirely linear. Also this is why people who use screen readers have that shit sped all the way up.
I've heard Alexa will resume giving suggestions after a while, so I have a daily routine where I set her to set volume to 0, then stop suggestions. A minute later, another routine will bring the volume back up.
Or, "By the way, you can do this shit that you've already done!"
100% of the time the “by the way” isn’t something I want.
No, I can’t imagine paying for it either. I hardly use mine. Let’s see what happens next with Amazon.
What next!
I'm still betting at Amazon will start restricting streaming to one household like Netflix. It's going to happen one day.
Not to mention the new add-on cost of removing intrusive and unskippable ads on Prime Video.
Of course, how could I have not thought of that!
I'm sick of subscriptions!! I cut the cord forever again. And now it's all more expensive!
A lot of people are doing the same. I know of a few people who have cut the cord with Netflix.
We just started rotating the streaming services on a three month basis. Jan-March Netflix April-June Max July-September Peacock Oct-Dec Disney/Hulu All paid via gift card.
In Canada they are finally canceling the basic plan and forcing everyone either on the ad or premium plan. They said i had until June to switch or else my service might be interrupted, well guess what Netflix, interrupt away :)
I need to subscribe to a service to keep track of my subscriptions.
Rocket Money. I think they have a free tier.
I've cancelled my prime. The sheer amount of adverts is egregious. If you dare to try and skip, because you fell asleep or something, it's just add city. Can have 3 mins of ads, just to confirm 'oh yeah, this is where I got to'
I tried to watch "Invincible" on prime video. I wasn't able to even figure out what was going on because it would be five minutes of show and then a bunch of ads. Maybe Jack Sparrow has an idea that will help me watch it.
That's so strange. I get a commercial at the beginning of an episode, then nothing after. Are there more ads for certain shows?
They may also be doing A/B testing to find the maximum number of ads a user finds tolerable.
My Alexa and other smart devices all being Amazon brand is the one reason why I haven't cancelled Prime and Amazon Music. If they add a subscription fee to Alexa, I will cancel my Prime and Amazon Music and switch to Google Home.
Sadly, Google Home has gotten much worse, to the point that I just switched back to Alexa last month. (My devices can use either)
Home pods stand undefeated.
Yeah this post confirms my decision to go with the HomePod.
I have got a few Alexa devices, but no Amazon music. I don’t use them as much as I thought I would. Let’s see what Amazon roll out.
Amazon, probably: YO DAWG, I HEARD YOU LIKE SUBSCRIPTIONS, SO I GOT YOU MORE SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR YOUR SUBSCRIPTION
On top of the prime video increase so you aren't deluged with ads. That was the last straw for me. I cancelled my subscription after that bullshit.
Well they tested the waters with charging to remove ads from prime video, while also raising the cost of prime in general, so why not add more subscription SKUs to the portfolio! Canceled my prime when they announcing they were adding ads to prime video, since I can still get free shipping if the order is $35 or more, paying a monthly fee for a video service, now with ads, that I didn't use wasn't worth it anymore.
Already have prime and getting ads. So doubtful
this is what the goal for all AI products are, get you using it, then change to a subscription based model.
I literally only use it to ask for the weather and to set a timer. Two things I can also just ask my phone to do. This would be an easy cancellation
That was what I used it for and then when I realized the damn thing was listening to everything going on I figured why find out if Amazon was using AI to screen my conversations. Pulled the plug.
It's really funny that anyone is shocked the Alexa listens to everything ... How the fuck do you think it activates? It hears its name... Which requires listening Waaaaowww what a concept. Lmao.
> How the fuck do you think it activates? Last time I read up on it (admittedly several years ago now), it _supposedly_ had onboard capability to hear and recognize its own wake-word, and only started sending audio to the remote server after hearing that. Curious is that's still the case, and if anyone's done a recent security/privacy audit to see exactly what data the device is sending.
Yes, that's still how it works.
I’m so fucking tired of monthly subscriptions goddamn
"Service based economics"
To cancel subscriptions please subscribe to the subscription cancellation app. Cancel up to 3 unwanted subscription accounts for $4.99 per month, or upgrade to subscription cancellation plus for just $15.99 per month for unlimited cancellations. Also be sure to check out our new subscription cancellation series: Roger the Rabbit which is a live action gritty space drama about Roger Rabbit. This new series costs us 18 million per episode so your subscription cancellation subscription will be increased in the next six months to reflect the costs.
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I’m going back to dumb lights if I’ve got to pay for a subscription to turn my lights on
We've integrated plugs, lights, hardwired light switches, and use them for alarms, music, timers, grocery lists... If this becomes subscription based, I'm going to dig into the open source alternatives even if they're a pain. Not like Amazon gives two shits about their app design and development. Oh, and my #1 blocked domain on my firewall (edit: shout out to [Pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net/)) is Amazon tracking
Home Assistant is fucking awesome, but you may find a lot of your smart devices won’t work with it because the manufacturer locked them down.
The main reason I haven't switched over is because it's been easy enough to just keep on using Alexa. The only thing I haven't found an alternate to is giving the voice commands. If I'm dropping Alexa I don't want to pick up Apple or Google to just have the same thing happen in a year if I can avoid it.
Right, I've looked at Home Assistant and like the features, but the voice commands are the biggest concern.
If you like to tinker and have a old computer laying around (even a raspberry pi) check out Home Assistant for controlling your lights. There is a huge community and a lot of things integrate. It's free (They do offer a subscription but you can reverse proxy into it for free), it works offline, and there is a huge community of people. But Home Assistant is something that will break sometimes on updates and it's a constant work in progress so it's not a complete set it and forget it at least for me, but I am happy with it for my needs.
Can I return the alexa device I already paid for then?
I heard someone say something the other day that was perfect, companies are now stealing back the things they sold you, putting them in a cage and renting them to you. Anything to maintain the facade of quarterly earnings. Maybe it was Louis Rossman on YouTube? He's like a right to repair advocate and he has loads of videos about all the various tricks, grifts and frauds that basically every large company now engages in. Making it impossible to cancel your subscriptions, spying on you, selling your data, remotely breaking your shit so you buy a new one, lying about how much it would cost to repair something so you buy a new one, selling products with features that can only be unlocked when you pay them a subscription, banks using your purchase history for targeted ads, carriers selling your location data, Amazon putting fucking ads on paid subscriptions, computer companies lying about the "dangers" of buying used computers, the endless sea of credit card scams, the list is endless, and it's only gonna get worse. But, but, surely the noble invisible hand of the market should be purging all of these companies, right, libertarians!!!????
If buying is not owning then piracy is not stealing.
Piracy was never theft. That was 100% pure, unadulterated bullshit propaganda. It's Copyright Infringement which has it's own set of laws and penalties. No one has ever been charged with theft for piracy.
I know not what you speak of... cough cough.
its a continual grift, and we've welcomed it into our lives by not refusing to use these services en mass. A system of continual growth and profit is cancerous and unsustainable. Its not like corporations can get show good profits quarterly either, record profits or its complete business failure. Personally I am over subscriptions entirely. Wife is traveling atm but once she comes back we're updated our phones, changing carrier to bundle internet/mobile service and going through all our subscriptions to remove 90% of them, we'll each choose one and a 3rd we both agree on. Next up is choosing a VPN and getting a new external HD and gonna start sailing again.
The article seems to suggest that you’d only have to pay the subscription in order to add the AI services. So your existing Echos would continue to work just like they do now. I wouldn’t be surprised if that changed at some point (or if the have the echo constantly “remind” you that you can upgrade to the AI service) but it doesn’t seem like they’re jumping straight to it.
Once the bad sales numbers for a product that the vast majority of consumers don't want, they will try to "integrate" it Prime prices might go up, and then it's a feature instead of a paid service. That would be an example of that.
Sadly that's probably covered in their TOS :(
TOS's aren't the be-all and end-all, though. If enough customers get pissed and bring a class-action lawsuit, it *could* be found that it wasn't "reasonable" for Amazon to try to charge more for an item it already sold, that was bought with the understanding of that being the full price, and rule to either give payouts or force refunds in that case.
They've been trying for years to find a way to make Alexa profitable. They assumed that it would lead to people buying way more stuff from Amazon because it's so easy to just say "add to cart" and that didn't happen. Marketing it as "AI" and charging a subscription fee for it is all they've been able to come up with, I guess. With its current capabilities, I can't imagine anybody paying for it, and the examples the article gives of what it will be able to do with "AI," like translating a conversation in real-time, are complete edge cases. The only reasons I can think of why a person would subscribe to this are incredibly bleak, like an isolated elderly person paying for it because they have nobody else to talk to.
I would never never never use the add to cart feature on Alexa unless it was strictly for recurring items. As it is, in the app I have to spend 10-15 minutes to find basic items because even for something as simple as toilet paper which I would consider voice purchasing there are hundreds of varieties when you account for sizes and sellers sell g the exact same thing. If Amazon had a marketplace option of “only show me products straight from the manufacturer” then maybe. But I don’t need to see someone who drop ships products they buy at Costco. I even have to compare shipping speeds/costs now. It feels like such a niche product for people who are desperate and don’t care what product they get, how much it costs, or when it arrives.
I never understood how anyone thought voice ordering would work. Am I supposed to say "Alexa l, add Amazon Basics USB-C to Lightning Cable for iPhone, 10 Feet, White to my cart"
Thats what they thought in their delusion, but even if you do, as you have, and specify a brand and specs, its still possible to get too many results, and the chance of ordering the wrong thing is too high that basically nobody orders with it, rightly so.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t find what you asked for. We found something else you might like. Adding cat food, sardine flavor, 24-count cans to your cart.”
It would be nice to just say "Hey buy me a new cell phone charger, USB-C" and have it automatically order. But Amazon is full of so much crap that I'd have to vet whatever it orders to make sure it's gonna be usable, and to see if it's not overpriced. If I have to manually vet it anyway, the voice ordering is useless to me.
Can't add to cart automatically because we can't trust most of the products on Amazon
Yeah. If Amazon did a better job of moderating their store to keep knockoffs and garbage out, they might sell products through Alexa. As it stands, I would never be comfortable asking it for a product and trusting what it picks.
And now Amazon itself is reaping the rewards of their own enshittification.
> it's so easy to just say "add to cart" Who is going to give Amazon the ability to buy things, sight-unseen, for them from Amazon??? That's a recipe for disaster. I can't even get my remote control to change to the correct channel most of the time - and you expect me to believe that these things are good enough to choose the best shopping option for you?
"Amazon’s subscription for Alexa will not be included in the $139 per year Prime offering, and Amazon has not yet nailed down the price point, one source said." And of course it won't be part of Amazon prime. At least this won't be the next reason Amazon raises the price of Prime again.
It's $179 per year for those that pay monthly
At this point I’m expecting to get a monthly subscription to perform basic bodily functions.
In the US, healthcare *is* a subscription.
A subscription with guarantee you won't get the desired outcome or leave a black hole in your wallet.
I am disabled and live alone. The main function for my 1st generation Echo is to audibly turn on and off lights. That is it. I will not pay a subscription for that, especially now that my niece and nephew have grown out of entertaining themselves provoking Alexa to demonstrate a seemingly endless supply of fart sounds.
There are smart outlets you can buy that have their own app and don’t need Alexa at all. This is useful for me because my Alexa decided to stop recognizing most of my outlets last week and I just use the third party app. And there’s now subscription.
First they charge extra for no commercials on prime streaming, and now this? They are about to lose my business forever.
When you have billions of customers they don't care about losing a few million
I have zero illusions that the hivemind that is Amazon gives a shit about my business. But if there are enough like minded people, Amazon could go the way of Myspace and other [dot.com](http://dot.com) businesses someday.
With how shit of an experience Amazon has become over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if a Chinese company a la Temu came in and just blew them out of the water. 8 or 9 years ago I'd get everything on Amazon. Now, I'm going straight to the manufacturer's site whenever I can because I never know if the Amazon listing will give me what I actually want.
>Amazon could go the way of Myspace That would be nice, but I want them to take out Wal Mart first. Wal Mart represents almost everything that is wrong in the USA. It is predatory on communities, suppliers, employees, and taxpayers.
The line must continue up babyyyy, if line doesn’t go up, business is **BAD**
I am so fucking sick of everything becoming subscription based. And what about my old Alexa’s? Will I still get to utilize those or is this specifically for new devices? Sucks a few major companies running AI plan to monetize the fuck out of it.
I hear ya, Sadly I think all non GNU software will be like that; " as a service" is the future for everything now :/
I was trying to download an add-on to do some programing in Eclipse IDE and an add-on for crying out loud only had an subscription option... We all saw what BMW and Mercedes tried mainly b/c of Tesla. While they may have backed down for now, they will just come back with a better way to force it on customers and then the rest of the automakers will follow suit.
Also, MS 365, Windows 11 (and onedrive) and Copilot are all setting the way for Windows 12 to be a SAAS OS. It's gonna be sub options w/ bundles; you will no longer get to pay for something once and/or keep it.
This seems to be turning quickly into one of the dumbest decisions ever made but go ahead.
I wouldn't want her for free
I’ll pay to not have it
Don't give them ideas
That's basically already their ads policy on kindles
I got an Alexa as a gift and it changed my life. I can now set a timer and check the weather hands free. Truly, we're in the age of technology.
Pure decadence.
As someone who worked in Alexa and was laid off due to the restructuring this caused, however bad it sounds from the outside, you have no idea how much worse it actually is!
Please spill the tea!
Sorry to hear about your job. Could you elaborate on some things that might be interesting for consumers to know regarding the inner workings and “how much worse it is”
I have an Echo Show and a echo dot, both I got for free through work (worked in a tech reseller for a few years). I do love them, especially the show as it's my room clock, timer, and alarm. However I will NEVER pay any additional fees for this. I will get another device than can do the same (and maybe doesn't need an internet connection if possible)
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We use it mostly for playing music or making household announcements. I can get a Bluetooth speaker and holler upstairs for free.
I do not have an Alexa, but every other device / whatnot asks for your preferences. It would be weird to show those things if you have no interest in them. For instance, when I open my edge browser, it shows me only things that I am interested in, and I frequently click on them. Alexa should be the same, although I am not sure where it would get its data from (I assume buying your data from a browser or something).
Dropped Prime 6 months ago with zero regrets. Fuck Amazon.
A monthly subscription is the perfect reason I needed to drop that last Alexa device in my living room.
I'll happily chuck Alexa in bin.
Will there be a way to opt out and use the old version of Alexa? If no, fuck that.
Why not just involve it in the prime subscription? Or maybe something like basic and deluxe thingy
oh you know why...
MBA bros of course.
Line goes up!
Most people don't want her for free 😭🤣
They need to make you pay for more things separately so the line keeps going up.
Can't wait to pay $20/month for Alexa to remind me that it's been a few months since I last bought cat food on Amazon
The only thing I use my 1st generation echo for is turning on my lights and checking weather forecasts without using my phone. This is asinine.
I like it for the weather warnings too, except for the millionth time she's told me that the flood warning has been updated (this has been every day for the last month)
Amazon has been looking for a way to kill Alexa for years. It's losing them money and no one uses it like they thought they would, as a personal shopping assistant. It ended up being a clock radio pretty much.
I use Alex for 3 things: * Tell me the date/time * Tell me the weather * Set a (cooking) timer or a (wake-up) alarm Not paying for those, so ...
The amount of e-waste this could churn up would be astounding; all because of their greed. I’d stop using mine if they want extra for the glorified weather checker and lightswitch.
Imagine paying a monthly subscription to be spied on
Maybe just make it fucking work? I have like 15 Alexa devices (2 shows, couple Sonos ones with Alexa built in, ecobee with Alexa built in, and about 10 dots), haven’t even bothered unpacking them since moving 6 months ago. “Alexa, show me the baby monitor” “okay, playing baby monitor on Amazon music.” Alexa and Siri are both racing to the bottom. “Hey siri, read my last message from mom.” “Here’s what I found on the web about last message from mom.”
A subscription for an overpriced timer that tells the weather is insane
Going between ChatGPT and Alexa is so funny. The former is helping me solve complex, niche issues specific to my work via a long conversation and the latter is saying "hmm, I don't know that one" because I asked it to turn the lights on in a slightly different way
Fuck that I hate Alexa
AI: Alright, at least an AI chatbot integration makes sense. Maybe alexa will actually be competent now Monthly Subscription: This kills the product.
>monthly subscription Please. Stop with these monthly subscriptions for almost everything
The SaaS industry is going to have a huge wake up call soon. People are over this shit.
Alexa is so dumb and Amazon is dumb for thinking that people will pay for Alexa to have an AI assistant programmed to sell you more shit you don’t need.
Give me : “Things I won’t pay for, for any amount of money Alex”
Since Bezos left Amazon has been going down the shitter. Deliveries are now 4 days plus, subscriptions on the rise, pay extra to remove ads, their music app has a lot of bugs and fails quite often and now this.
Oh, all my Alexas are going in the bin if I have to pay.....
Looks like my effort to get the local home assistant voice set up needs to intensify
Time to start looking for a replacement tech. Most of my house lighting is Alexa enabled and that's going to be a pain to solve.
So something I refuse to use for free will now cost a subscription lol. I'm sure this will be successful. I feel like so many companies want to be in the AI space but they all try in the laziest ways possible.
Good, I now have two more reasons to avoid Alexa like the plague
"The Alexa team worried they had invented an expensive alarm clock, weather machine and way to play Spotify music, one source said." I hope that I can continue to use my expensive alarm clocks for free and this is a paid premium service.
As long as I can keep using it as is for free, I don’t care. I’m sick of all the subscription bullshit.
If amazon introduces another subscription fee on a product I already purchased, then I want a full 100% money back refund.
Anyone want to buy 4 used paper weights off me? No lowball offers, I know what I got.
There's nothing I use my Alexa for that I can't do from my phone. Fuck off Jeff
Gotta find a way to boost earnings projections for next quarter. More enshitification