Amazon Alexa is getting a subscription-based upgrade. Can Siri be far behind?
Amazon Alexa is about to undergo a major upgrade, but there is a catch.
After offering free virtual assistants through Alexa for nearly 10 years, Amazon is reportedly planning to develop an AI-powered version of Alexa that “could cost up to $10 a month,” according to The Washington Posta publication owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
If you already own an Echo speaker or other Amazon device, or plan to buy one to take advantage of Alexa features, don’t worry. You can still use the free version of Alexa – but you won’t have access to Alexa’s advanced features, like “recipe suggestions based on your family’s dietary restrictions and AI summaries of the news.”
This new development raises the question: Will all AI-powered virtual assistants or services eventually offer a more powerful, feature-rich version as a subscription?
ChatGPT, Gemini, Alexa – is Siri next?
After rebranding Bard as Gemini, Google introduced a new subscription-based model for accessing its most premium AI assistant: Gemini Advanced. You can try the service for $0 for a month, but after that first month, it costs $19.99 each month.
For $20/month, Gemini Advanced uses Google’s next-generation 1.5 Pro AI model, comes with 2TB of storage from Google One, and lets you use Gemini in Gmail, Docs, and other services. For people who use virtual assistants for basic tasks, $20 for Gemini Advanced seems like a waste.
While Google was the first of the major tech companies to introduce a subscription for its AI-powered virtual assistant, it followed in OpenAI’s footsteps. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Plus in early 2023 at a price of $20/month, giving users access to more powerful AI models that could handle more complex queries and other premium features.
With Google now offering subscriptions to Gemini Advanced, it’s no surprise that Amazon is now jumping on the bandwagon to make even more profit. But are people actually paying for Gemini Advanced right now?
Currently, no published subscriber numbers are available, but in a survey by Android Police When asked if people pay for Gemini Advanced, 71% of 2,363 people responded with the answer, “No, I do not pay for Gemini Advanced.”
Given the number of subscriptions you currently have to juggle – streaming services, dating apps, printer ink, food delivery packages and more – I’m not surprised by the high percentage of people not paying for Gemini Advanced. But if OpenAI, Google and now Amazon are charging for an AI-powered version of their chatbot/VA, isn’t Apple bound to do the same?
Apple already charges $19.95 per month for Apple One, so the company is clearly not averse to the subscription model. And Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, said CNBC that Apple may try to “pass it on with the Apple One subscription model” and charge between $10 and $20 for Apple Intelligence.
Since the company already provides an Apple One subscription for its users, I would hope that any costs for Apple Intelligence would be built into the existing Apple One subscription options and not have to be kept up to date as a standalone, additional subscription.
But isn’t AI currently solving the wrong problems anyway? Unless Google, Amazon, Apple and others provide a clear reason to invest in an AI-powered assistant rather than a simple counterpart, I can hardly see anyone shelling out $20 a month for it.
