Not free anymore? Amazon may bring a paid Alexa version to market next year

Amazon’s plan to charge for its AI chatbots could happen as early as next year. The company has talked about the need to monetize Alexa which requires huge investments and hardware to run and manage AI applications for these systems.

The company was reportedly looking to introduce paid Alexa to consumers in June this year, but reports say the launch has been delayed to 2025 due to Amazon’s concerns. The company is expected to call it Alexa Plus and it’s believed to work similarly to Microsoft’s ChatGPIT Plus and CoPilot Pro.

Amazon is giving people more personalized AI products but it obviously won’t be free. The company talked about its long game in the large language model (LLM) area in the coming years, which was previewed with Alexa that gave more human-like responses. It is noteworthy to see that the push for AI is increasing from all sides, and companies also feel eager to adopt paid models using these tools for consumers.

This makes sense when you’re targeting businesses that require more data resources and application support to run their operations, but for a regular user these AI features need to be developed and polished. So that the payment model can also be considered. Amazon showed off some of its paid services at the event, including emergency alerts that work through Echo speakers but are still intended to be a novelty for most people.

It is likely that internal concerns are around these issues and perhaps by next year, companies like Amazon will have a better hold on the field and enough ammunition to compete with the best in the market.

AI is certainly a topic of discussion in the industry and for better or worse, it is likely to shape these companies in the near future.