how do companies that invested money to develop AI make money then ?
new technology development needs money.
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Amazon Could Charge Up to $10/Month for Alexa
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new technology development needs money.
Ah, so you didn’t actually read the first post of mine that you quoted.
I specifically separated a home assistant from home automation for a reason…
Alexa never made money, they were selling device for loss.It's funny how Amazon's starting to charge for the things they used to offer for free. You'd think they weren't doing well or something...
The vast majority of them…don’t.
We’re in a bubble. You can launch a company as a SPAC (read: modern day fraud), spend a **** ton of money, and then go bankrupt, or you get acquired.
To date, no company has found a way to monetize AI services in a way that comes even remotely close to the capital expenditures they’ve pumped in.
This entire field is going to collapse soon (1-2 years), leaving only the Meta’s, Microsoft’s, and openAI remaining because they are too big to fail. The bubble burst is going to destroy tons of retirement accounts though! So that’s…something?
I own several Alexa devices to mostly turn lights on or off. If they charge for that, I’ll toss them all and go old school and use light switches again.
Services or products that offer something of value to consumers earn their money. Consumers pay for the product or tolerate ads because its *worth* it.
Alexa and Siri are not worth it.
I'm sure they'll just bundle it with Prime and bump the Prime price again
They know people will pay for it if it's force bundled with something people actually do want (Prime shipping)
They know people will pay for it if it's force bundled with something people actually do want (Prime shipping)
I did.
I don’t and you don’t get an à la cart definition of what is a home assistant. Siri and Alexa (et al) will remain an integral piece of it. There will always be a market for it.
All our devices listen to us. I don't care what Apple's stance is on privacy, its ********. I have an iPhone and my sister has a Pixel (I believe) and when i go upstate to visit her obviously we converse. When I get back to the city and I check into my socials, surf the internet... yes, all adverts to pieces of our conversations we had that day. Instagram does some HEAVY listening.
I understand the criticisms of the Alexa value proposition and charging for a previously free service is never going to be popular.
But I think the elephant in the room...is how AI driven services are actually going to be paid for ? The choices seem to be Ads, selling your data or a subscription. We know these services are compute intensive and those NPU heavy server farms aren't cheap to buy or run.
It will be interesting to see if Apple Intelligence becomes an iPhone "pro only" feature with iPhone 16. Samsung does similar (premium "S" series get AI whereas midrange "A" series do not).
But I think the elephant in the room...is how AI driven services are actually going to be paid for ? The choices seem to be Ads, selling your data or a subscription. We know these services are compute intensive and those NPU heavy server farms aren't cheap to buy or run.
It will be interesting to see if Apple Intelligence becomes an iPhone "pro only" feature with iPhone 16. Samsung does similar (premium "S" series get AI whereas midrange "A" series do not).
They are going to kill Alexa. Companies get so obsessed with the bottom dollar that they can’t see the forest from the trees. Sometimes you have products that by themselves don’t create profit but those products open the door to people spending money on other products. I see it all the time. Companies get rid of products because they are not making big profits from them and in the long run they end up making less money instead of more. We have a local gas station that had the best chicken tender in town but because they were not making a lot of money off them they got rid of them. Now they sell less gas and other food products because a lot of people would stop and get chicken tenders for lunch and gas up or buy snack foods at the same time they would get their chicken tenders. Now those people stopped coming to the gas station because there are closer gas stations to buy gas from. The main reason they were getting gas there was because they wanted chicken tenders. A big national chain store does the same thing, you can probably guess who I mean. They get rid of a popular product and replace it with their generic product because they think they will make more profit. I refuse to buy their products because they tend to be of poor quality. Instead I just order what I need from a different store. I swear there are no wise CEOs anymore, they are all blinded by money.
I find Alexa is the best of the bunch after Google crippled assistant from all the lawsuits .... and I use the hell out of Alexa - but agree.... would not pay for it.
Amazon has some subscriptions services that I feel an AI enabled Alexa should be able to replace that might justify something these current paid features for some people:
- I've fallen and can't get up service (Alexa calls for ambluance, police, fire, etc. but uses third party call center)
-Makes dog barking sounds if it thinks a prowler is around
-Calls the police if it hears breaking glass
These are features of two separate paid services that are both like $6 a month. My mom passed from leukemia and was really sick in the last months but insisted on living alone and I almost bough the "I've fallen and can't get up" service they have.... but I also have always felt these things should already be able to do that.
All subscriptions?
What if ongoing resources are needed to provide the product?
We "subscribe" to water and power ... surely you're not against that?
In my country we don’t subscribe to those, we pay for the amount we use. Your example is like saying we subscribe to bread because I buy a loaf every few days. Very different to a SaaS model.
I'm starting to question why everyone does want Prime shipping.
I did a survey of the 25 or so "Maybe someday" items in my amazoid "Save for later" cart, and over half of them offered Free Shipping/Returns (I don't carry Prime anymore), and all the items in my "Immediate" cart said, "Order now and receive it by tomorrow/Monday"; I also know that many items I've ordered via Prime took 3 days, 5 days, 2 or 3 weeks, so what is Prime good for? (I do realize some folks use the streaming service, I did use its music streaming which was poor, and only watched one series and don't even look anymore, so there's that).
I'll still need to order some specialty items from amazoid, but any more I try to buy local, even if it costs me a bit more. Tired of feeding the oligarchs. 🤨
Voice assistants are great at doing mundane things without moving - set a timer, turn off the light, pause the music…
I still use it more for novelty than true productivity, both Alexa and Siri.
It’s definitely not a utility I’m willing to pay for, though maybe it’s more integrated with others who are willing to pay.
I still use it more for novelty than true productivity, both Alexa and Siri.
It’s definitely not a utility I’m willing to pay for, though maybe it’s more integrated with others who are willing to pay.
well, Alexa, I have things that respond to you, but you really are not much to me, I will not pay a penny for your services... "so long, and thanks for all the fish!"