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Amazon Mulls $5 to $10 monthly price tag for unprofitable Alexa service, AI revamp (www.reuters.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're right, but the reason that hasn't caught on is that talking to your "smart" house is stupid. You can't possibly program every possible command or situation, and telling Alexa to dim the lights in your kitchen to 40% is slower than using a dimmer switch. Actual smart homes are automated to the point where you don't need to talk to your room.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This. Running Home Assistant on literally anything stronger than a raspberryPi means you can automate damn near anything. And yea, it might be a pain in the ass to setup, but once it's done it basically runs itself.

And it's infinitely, overwhelmingly better than than asking Google or Alexa to do any of it.

I have a bunch of wireless light switches all over the house, it's stupidly convenient once you stop thinking they have to be stuck in thy wall.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Got a bunch of Google home minis I use for smart lights and music. Do you know if it's possible to jailbreak/degoogle them to use with my own setup?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Jailbreak no, but you can sync them with home assistant and run them through thst as a bridge. Opens up a lot more flexibility in how you want to use it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is it much different from Google home? Seems similar from what I could tell from a quick glance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Think of it like a connective layer. You will still need to run your Home stuff through Google to function best, but you can then have it forward its actions and commands to fake listening devices on your network, that can make it work with anything you like, or do more than that.

It's powerful. I haven't delved fully into it yet, but it's also a great way to marry various smart home garbage together without being locked into a system. Use zigbee, z wave, matter, hue, and wifi blubs and devices all together seemlessly.