Amazon is far too busy building unnecessary nonsense into Alexa, while completely neglecting the stuff that matters. For example, I will never ever enable purchasing via Alexa until they clearly establish voice recognition. I’m not lonely, I don’t need this thing to have conversations with me. I just need it to do what I ask.
Oh, and make it able to react to more sounds. There’s a bird ID app that can hear dozens of birds, some dozens of meters away, on your phone’s crappy mic and identify them accurately. Alexa should be able to hear a buzzer and act on it, as well as identify your voice for purchases.
Why is that so difficult for them to comprehend?
Spot on, @Glen_King !
The incessant “do you also want ?” suggestions rank right up there. If I want today’s weather, that’s what I want–not for her to ask if I also want the weather for the next seven days. If I want that, I will ask…
I think Amazon would be much more successful selling an Alexa subscription to get rid of the ads and “by the ways” than they would a “smarter” Alexa that you can converse with. I’d throw $2/month to get rid of the annoyances.
“ Successful” means different things for a publicly held company like Amazon. They always need to keep one eye on the stock market, which means they need to be Buzzy, and they need to have a business plan which looks “sustainable“ at a quick glance. So while choice is good, and unquestionably Many people would like Alexa to say less, that’s not going to bump the stock. An AI assistant on a paid subscription probably will. Just sayin’ … 
Not necessarily @JDRoberts in a respectful way. Amazon was the only Company for long period of time that didnt make money but was rewarded by wall street with consistent stock growth/value.
It wasn’t the only one, but definitely, yes, Amazon didn’t feel any need to make a profit for a long time because it had huge growth and, again, was Buzzy. But now it has some competition for online retail, and it needs to keep its story fresh. 
Amazon (AMZN) had a profit of $8.4 billion (yes, with a b) over the last three months of 2023, doing things the way that they do them.
Bill
Amazon lining up AI overhaul, paid plans for Alexa voice assistant
Nothing in the article that we don’t already know
Yeah, because Alexa has to actually work, at least most of the time.
According to Fortune , Amazon has grappled with getting its Alexa LLM to consistently and effectively make API calls, which is how the current Alexa interacts with your other stuff, such as third-party smart home devices and music services.
If it’s truly better, I can see some people paying for the features. But it has to provide true value. 
Perhaps it won’t always nag you about things and try to sell you products, too. “You might be running low on AA batteries. Would you like to order a hundred?” “Would you like tomorrow’s weather, too?” “I can tell you how long it will take to drive to work. Would you like me to do that every day?”
NO! If I want it, I’ll ask… 
I’d totally pay $5 a month for a smarter and ad-free Alexa
$5, maybe, but early reports are that they want to charge $9 dollars or $10, And I’m having a hard time imagining what would add that much value for me.
I want to know how Amazon is going to pay for all the sports rights it is getting (ha ha off-topic as it may be)
What could they really do different for 10 dollars a month what arent doing now? @jkp you have a point maybe they need to cover the cost for the rights to all of the games they are covering.
If they deploy an LLM model on par with the free level of ChatGPT or Gemini and expose it through app, web, and Alexa I could see the value. It’s a big IF that they could do similar quality though. I’m wondering if they might do that and just license one from a company they feel isn’t a threat to other areas of their business, like maybe Anthropic.