Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.
Between inserting ads into Amazon Video, scaling back on fast delivery, and this it looks like Amazon has maxed out their growth and are scaling back on their loss leaders that were used to get where they are.
For the first time in at least a decade of being a Prime member. I have set a reminder to cancel before it renews next time.
So many deliveries fail to be on time, I’m getting too many ads in my face when I use products I paid for (Fire TV auto-plays ads for content or cars or whatever now).
Don’t set a reminder, just cancel now. If you cancel, you get the rest of the time you paid for and it just doesn’t automatically review, so there’s no penalty to canceling early versus right before the deadline.
I’m not sure that’s true. There’s a pause option and a cancel option. It sounds like canceling ends your benefits immediately, and the pause leaves them. I want to cancel, but at the right time.
It’s absolutely true, my friend. Only takes a minute.
They just wanna scare you out of cancelling.
Well, I’ve set the reminder. There’s no urgency to cancel with 6 months left on the clock.
I’m not sure that’s true.
Well, I’m sure it’s true. I’ve started and stopped Prime benefits multiple times.
It’s true, I canceled mine last year. I also haven’t missed it, if I need things from Amazon I just have to spend over 35 for free shipping, and while it’s slower it really doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it might.
Cancel now! It’s incredibly convoluted process that makes you think you’ve done it but no, there’s always one more confirm screen hiding behind a tiny button
Last time I canceled it it was very easy to do (amazon.ca)
Nah, I’ve paid for it and it seems there’s no refund.
Unfortunately, I’m still getting overnight and next day delivery on a lot of stuff, so I’m not giving Prime up. I did stop watching Prime Video already, since I’m not paying yet more.
Now I’m already way into the Apple ecosystem, so if Amazon insists that I give Apple yet more money for airpods, I’m ok with that
I use the overnight and next day delivery a lot, but when it goes wrong it’s very frustrating, because there’s seemingly nowhere else to buy an 8TB HDD in-person. Fry’s closed down, Best Buy is garbage, etc.
We made this bed by giving Amazon all of our business and shutting down all their competitors. :-/
… and pushing ads on echo show devices.
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Sadly, that’s what we do with phones, cars, tvs, etc
Fortunately, there are solutions to each of those:
- phones - alternative Android ROMs and fdroid
- cars - remove the connectivity module
- TVs - don’t let it access your network and don’t use the apps
That’s not true for Alexa, you need to allow it to spy for its core functionality to work.
Yeap I’m just saying it’s sadly all too common
I’m actually degoogling at the moment precisely because of all this
I wouldn’t be able to find a use for Alexa if they were paying me $10/month to use it.
I’d buy 2, start a neverending conversation going between them, and lock em away in the corner in the attic.
Make it three, call it The Ellipsis
With how garbage Alexa is now, there is no way in hell I’m paying them anything. I’d love a refund for the three useless dots I have now.
. . .
Those are periods!
Sorry
• • • ノ( ゜-゜ノ)
I wouldn’t put one of those amazon spy devices in my house even if they paid me. There’s no way in hell I’m going to pay to use one.
Eh … it’s not spying. It can’t even understand me when I’m talking to it.
But the one in your pocket is fine?
One of the reasons I use pixel phones, Google already knows everything, no point in Samsung knowing it too
If my Alexa stopped working because it needed a subscription it’s going straight in the trash.
Neat, lots more e-waste incoming
All the two alexas I own were given to me. Fuck no I am not paying $10 a month for a talking weather reporter.
This is going to flop.
A big appeal of assistant devices was the barrier to entry was extremely low. So low that they could be purchased in multiples and given as gifts and were easy for the recipients to set up and use. So low that Alexa integration was common on many types of devices at many pricepoints.
Setting one up and being asked to pay a monthly sub might not go so well. People are getting burnt out of constant subscriptions bleeding them dry. I really don’t know how many would be willing to pay for something that was once free and was basically taken away from them.
this is also not including the growing amount of people that are goddamn sick and tired of hearing about AI constantly being shoved into everythingFor me ….
On the one hand it worked. The cheap price introduced me to something I wouldn’t have bothered with. And the cheap price encouraged me to buy many. Now I count on it. But if it’s not cheap, I have no reason to pick that option
People don’t want that shit for free… Why would they pay for it.
Just slap more ads on it, I don’t know haha
The New Siri seems to be quite useful, with “personal context” understanding my calendar, messages, mail etc.
ChatGPT 4 voice mode is very impressive, with the conversation getting clarifications and finding exactly the information I want (when it is not hallucinating). ChatGPT-4o will be amazing if it is as good as what we saw from the demo.
It is not for everyone, but I personally use AI chat every day and find it useful.
Chatgpt finds you useful also!
I’ll integrate ChatGPT into my household when I can run it locally on my own server computer.
You can do that right meow. Not ChatGPT but open source models.
Anything decent that doesn’t require a couple of 3090s?
Most assistance models will run in a pi
Are you not able to access ChatGPT-4o? Its what my app defaults to instead of regular 4
I am a free user, and it is still chatgpt 4.
And the new voice model doesn’t seem to be available yet, even for paid users.
Alright I’m a paid user and I do have the voice model. Had it for a few weeks now.
That’s voice chat which has been there for a long time.
The 4o voice model is different. 4o can chat much more naturally, and you can interrupt the voice chat in 4o.
Try it, you can’t interrupt the chat unless you touch the screen.
You can go back to see the 4o voice chat demo, and you will find out which different it is.
Two things:
- our alexa units are fine. We manage a half-dozen bulbs and a set-top box.
- if they want a subscription to keep doing that, HomeAssistant becomes the top job on the queue.
That’s it.
People are missing the point. This was ALWAYS the plan. Get Alexa in hundreds of thousands of homes and get everyone to used to using it. Than charge money.
Even if only a quarter of the users pay, they’ll make a ton of money.
I see you are using than when you should be using then.
- Then is for time, similar to when. “Back then”
- Than is for comparisons. “I have more than you”
I mean, they accomplished the first part mostly because they are cheap connected speakers, but I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t absolutely loath their home assistants. Got rid of mine (Both Google and Amazon) not just because they are a privacy nightmare, but because they are completely fucking infuriating to work with.
The exact same phrase is never guaranteed to have the same results. The assistant hardly ever answers a question right. It routinely takes repeated attempts to get it to control any of my connected lights. It responds to people that weren’t talking to it. I could keep going…
If they tried charging me for it before I rage quit them, I would have just rage quit sooner.
Using free users to train the paid version and then flipping the switch on enshitification of the “free” tier to force need for premium.
How long till there’s a solid project to gut Alexa devices and run them from pis arduinos and pico’s?
I’ve been wondering this. I have multiple of the older (non-Dot, the tall, cylindrical ones) Echoes. I hate using them. But I do like the form factor and sound quality.
It probably can’t be too hard to gut everything but the speakers, microphone and DC port, then wire in a Pi / Pi Zero, right…?
I assume their motherboard is a write-off. The form factor in speaker are probably all we have to start with. For a few bucks you could turn it into a decent Bluetooth speaker. Want to get a little more intense if you want to do anything interesting like voice control.
I’d really like to find a way to drive the display and touch screen on the shows
I am quite interested in what Google and Apple will do about their voice assistant devices. The New Siri appears to be quite useful, if it can actually do what we saw in WWDC. But Apple hasn’t mentioned anything about the HomePods.
Google Home/Nest has been stuck with the dumb version of Google Assistant, and has been getting worse. It has no integration with any other Google services, and there was no mention of Home/Nest in Google I/O.
If either HomePod or Nest gets released without requiring subscriptions, I might move away from Alexa devices.
Google has these phases for the products they develop, right now they’re in the phase where they’ve functionally abandoned home and are giving it just enough support to try to get some other company to manage/fix it and let them profit off of it.
I’m not usually a fan of Apple, but they’re probably going to be the ones defining where things go. If they want the market, it’s basically up for grabs right now.
Yep, I’m already too far into the Apple cult, but if they release AirPod and AppleTV with in-device support for new Siri, I’ll be begging them to take my money
… and a Thread radio. I’m not sure what use Apple plans but I’m thrilled my phone has it and plan to get an iPad that has it
Home Assistant will always be free.
Any recommendations for a voice tool? It felt like I would need to setup a room microphone on my orange pi when I was reading the docs.
It doesn’t help you if you need something right now, but Home Assistant is looking into building / engineering their own voice satellite device
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/06/12/roadmap-2024h1/
I haven’t done it myself but it looks like you’ll need some esphome devices like a speaker and a microphone
Is it able to use a LLM?
Yeah, you can plug it into a few external services like OpenAI or even use a local LLM like LocalAI. Not used either, but I know it’s possible.
That’s good, because it’s dog shit.
Skill issue
The models? The interface? Spinning your own? Home Assistant in general? What the fuck are you on about?
Do you have a hook up on some free dog shit?!
Download the Alexa app and have at it.
