Amazon leaks reveal a “Remarkable Alexa” with a monthly fee

It’s kind of odd that the company that pioneered the AI ​​assistant with Alexa is eerily quiet while other companies are announcing their brand new AI models. Even Amazon’s smart home competitor Google is working hard to get its AI model Gemini running on people’s PCs. However, that silence may soon end, as a leak from Amazon has revealed the existence of a so-called “Remarkable Alexa” that is meant to compete with the others.

Discovered by The Washington PostAmazon is currently working on a project that it internally calls “Remarkable Alexa” or “Project Banyan.” The company hopes to release it in October 2024, although it may come under a different name than its internal codename.

Amazon’s main focus is to analyze how people use existing AI models and pick the parts that users want most. The document states:

“AI features that help customers curate, summarize and explore current events were also ranked as a top customer request.”

That’s why Amazon is working on a “Smart Briefing” feature, which will take into account the user’s interests and use those topics to create a news report based on the day’s events. Amazon hopes this will lead to “recurring engagement” and get people using Remarkable Alexa on a daily basis.

Access to Remarkable Alexa will cost around $10 a month, but users can still use the free version (called “Classic Alexa”) for free. So Amazon doesn’t seem interested in trading the Alexa people know and love for an LLM. In the meantime, it might be worth checking out the best Amazon Echo devices in case Remarkable Alexa can use them, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the company uses this time to launch new hardware.