This decision to rely on Anthropic’s Claude models, as reported Reuterssurprised some. Historically, Amazon has favored its own technologies in order to maintain full control over the user experience and data management. However, the performance of Amazon’s internal models has been deemed insufficient.
A smarter… and more expensive Alexa
According to sources close to the development teams, these models suffered from significant latency, requiring up to seven seconds to respond to a voice command, a delay considered unacceptable for a next-generation assistant. By integrating Claude, Amazon hopes to solve these problems while offering a more fluid and interactive experience.
Claude, developed by Anthropic, is comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4 and stands out for its ability to process complex commands quickly and efficiently. This decision was facilitated by Amazon’s massive investment in Anthropic, and by the integration of Claude models via AWS, Amazon’s cloud platform. The company has therefore chosen to collaborate rather than persist with internal development, an approach that reflects the major challenges it faces in an increasingly competitive market.
An Alexa spokesperson stressed the importance of Amazon’s flexibility in technology, saying: ” We use a variety of technologies to power Alexa, and we will continue to employ multiple models, whether developed by Amazon or by our partners, to provide the best possible experience for our users. »
The main goal of this new version of Alexa is to extend its functionality far beyond simple voice commands for timers or weather. Alexa “Remarkable” will be able to handle more complex instructions, such as composing an email, ordering food, and setting reminders in a single command. This qualitative leap should position Alexa on the same level as its competitors, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, both of which feature synthetic voices.
Amazon also plans to use this new Alexa as a smart home automation hub. The assistant will be able to learn and adapt to users’ habits, and anticipate actions like adjusting the thermostat or recording TV shows without having to ask it anything.
These new features sound promising on paper, but will they be promising enough to make you sign up for them? Because they will come at a cost. Amazon plans to introduce a $5 to $10 monthly subscription to access the “Remarkable” version of Alexa, a first for the previously free service. That may be hard for some users to swallow, especially since Alexa “Remarkable” is not expected to be included in Amazon Prime.
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