Amazon plans to charge for Alexa in June—unless internal conflict delays revamp - eviltoast
Report claims Amazon is struggling to build a subscription version of Alexa.
  • The Pantser@lemmy.worldEnglish
    142·
    10 months ago

    Why would I pay for a spying machine? Good thing Home Assistant is steadily getting a full clone of homes and echos.

    • Flying_Hellfish@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I’m waiting for a cheap ESP implementation of a device with wake words, then I should be able to move the remainder of my crap over to HA from other assistants for day to day automation.

      • wer2@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        HomeAssistant supports ESP with wake word now. Requires some CPU on the server, but works pretty good.

        • Flying_Hellfish@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          I saw some of the smaller push button devices a few months ago, but haven’t seen anything with wake word. I guess that’s something to dig into this weekend. Thanks!

  • lqdrchrd@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    8·
    10 months ago

    I used to use mine to control a smart bulb in every room I had an Echo, but the experience has become so dire to the point that I now only use it for the one room where the light switch is in an awkward place to where I enter, and even then I find myself getting extremely frustrated with it. I would rather check the weather on my phone or control my AC through physical buttons than try to instruct something that seems to get worse at understanding me the more I use it.

    The idea of paying for any Alexa service is baffling to me. I can barely trust it to flip a switch without mishearing me, trying to sell me something, or dropping a “by the way…”

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.deEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      I never really understood the point of Alexa. Its language recognition is abysmal to the point of uselessness.

      A friend of mine has one to control music and it’s so frustrating. It doesn’t understand even the most basic artist or song names. Asking it to play anything is essentially a random song button for Spotify. Great value.

  • draughtcyclist@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    I barely trust it to control the lighting and tell me the temperature. Why am I ever going to trust it with financial transactions?

    I could, but the service would have to be leaps and bounds more accurate than it currently is. I’ll simply turn them into speakers.

  • LanternEverywhere@kbin.social
    6·
    10 months ago

    This is a misleading headline. It’s not talking about the existing Alexa products suddenly requiring a subscription for them to work, no the rumor is talking about a subscription for their upcoming higher tier Alexa Plus service with more advanced capabilities that’s based on generative AI.

    • remotelove@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Sweet. We get the option to pay for “more intelligent” advertising or get more advertising if we don’t. Win-win. 🤮

      I am starting the research for migrating to a local voice assistant so any suggestions would be cool. It’s gonna take some work, but there seem to be a few promising models out there.