Amazon plans to make you pay for Alexa to improve artificial intelligence

Amazon, a well-known online retail company, has begun to change the way it does business in an effort to increase profits from its products and services.

A clear example of this is that At the end of January, its streaming service Prime Videowill begin to include advertising in some countries. The only option not to see this advertising is to pay extra.

It seems that Amazon would have plans to do something similar with its Alexa virtual assistant. As it recently turned out, The American company will consider offering a paid version of Alexa.

A report from Business Insider mentions that Amazon will be working on a paid variant of Alexa called Alexa Plus.

This version will use more advanced and customizable AI technology called “Remarkable Alexa”, which has already been tested on 15,000 customers.

However, the same report notes that this new version of Alexa still doesn’t fully satisfy Amazon executives. Tests conducted so far indicate that this enhanced version of the personal assistant sometimes provides inaccurate information..

People familiar with the situation at Amazon told the media that “Amazing Alexa,” while quite competent at maintaining a conversation and sharing information, still creates problems, such as giving answers that are longer than necessary or not entirely accurate.

Except, It is necessary to improve the handling of simultaneous customer requests, such as turning on the lights and playing your favorite music at the same time..

Either way, it’s critical for Amazon that its virtual assistant makes money to continue its growth. An employee of the company clearly mentioned that if Alexa does not generate revenue, its future may be in jeopardy.

The report also shows that the paid version of Alexa, Alexa Plus is scheduled for June 30, 2024..

Amazon is expected to provide more details about this new version of Alexa in the coming months, including the price it will have in different parts of the world.

Amazon recently introduced the use of artificial intelligence to create aggregated reviews of its customers, with the goal of providing users with a complete and clear view of the products for sale on its huge online retail platform.

Nevertheless, The current review and rating system already has problems with fraud and manipulation.raising concerns about the reliability of AI-generated summaries.

It is taken into account that these models are imperfect and often tend to hallucinate when preparing texts.

Although the tool has been modified since its launch last year, the accuracy of the results obtained with this technology is still under debate. and there are already questions about the potential dehumanization of content and the creation of unclear descriptions.

This new generative AI technology is under scrutiny from some marketers and experts, who note that it unevenly highlights critical comments in product descriptions.

Reported cases include mischaracterization, such as referring to inversion tables for back pain relief as a “table” and highlighting minor negative opinions.. This has created discomfort among sellers who depend on positive reviews.

In some cases, AI reviews have led to erroneous conclusions about products based on a very small sample of negative reviews.

For example, The Brass Birmingham board game was rated as difficult to use, although less than 1% of comments were critical of it. Similarly, complaints about the smell of tennis balls were noted, despite only seven of more than 4,300 opinions being negative on this aspect.