Report: Amazon to Launch Paid Version of Alexa in October

October should be quite an interesting month for generative AI assistants. First of all, Apple is set to launch Apple Intelligence and a new version of its Siri AI assistant on iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sonoma 15.1. And now, the Washington Post is reporting that Amazon is also planning to launch a paid version of its Alexa assistant with new generative AI features in October.

Amazon first teased a new version of Alexa powered by generative AI during its last hardware and services event in September 2023. At the time, the company said that this new Alexa with generative AI features would be coming soon as a free preview in the US, but it never happened.

It’s been previously reported that Amazon was now planning to make these generative AI features in Alexa available via a subscription, and this has now been confirmed by new internal documents seen by the Washington Post. In these documents, Amazon is referring to the assistant as “Remarkable Alexa” or “Project Banyan.” However, the report says that Amazon was planning to decide on the final product name and its pricing “this month.”

“A subscription to the new assistant could cost as much as $10 a month, the documents said, but the original version, referred to as “classic Alexa,” will remain free to use,” the report reads. $10 may sound like a lot to ask from consumers when ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini all have free tiers (with restrictions). Apple Intelligence will also be free to use when it launches in the US on eligible devices in October.

The report from the Washington Post includes more details about what to expect from this paid version of Alexa. “The new Amazon Alexa is supposed to feel more conversational and charismatic, according to the documents. They describe how the assistant will learn to recognize the individual voices of new customers and ask people questions about themselves so as to be more helpful later,” the report explained.

Other new features mentioned in the report include “Smart Briefing,” a daily summary of news articles tailored to users’ interests. The new paid version of Alexa will also offer conversational shopping tools and a new experience designed for children called “Explore with Alexa 2.0.” The latter is said to offer stronger protections to protect children from harmful content.

Lastly, the new report also confirms the existence of Project Metis, a new ChatGPT-like assistant from Amazon. The web-based chatbot is expected to launch alongside the new paid version of Alexa this fall.