I have to say (as somewhat of an Amazon critic): I'm not sure that the smile below “Alexa+” works in this case; it comes across as a tad creepy for me with the AI context.
Smile? No, it's a penis.
Alexa+
41–50 of 355 posts
Re: Alexa+
#42I'm surprised this took as long as it did, but I'm also in the process of de-Alexafying my home and frankly this is pushing me further away. I quit using the grocery list functionality when they a) started putting ads in it b) made it so I could only use the phone app. I'm tired of it taking away features I found useful. I'm tired of it advertising features to me that I don't want to use, let alone hear about, and cannot make it stop.
I've reverted to regular dumb paper lists, dumb clocks, dumb timers and I'm happier for it. I'm not giving this a chance to be another ad vector (especially if I'm paying for the privilege one way or another). I find that they claim this can store arbitrary facts about me it learns through conversation chilling and not at all a feature I want to entertain. There is no privacy policy you can offer me that will convince me otherwise.
Re: Alexa+
#43Given how Apple Intelligence has gone so far, I'm not going to hold my breath.
Re: Alexa+
#44I remember reading an article about how Amazon would lose money every year on the Alexa service. I wonder if /how that will change now after this.
IIRC, Alexa lost money because:
1. People didn't actually use it to buy stuff because they want to comparison shop.
2. The devices were sold at a huge loss.
What I think has changed is that Amazon now has a lot more "products" to buy and devices that make the shopping easier. If you can ask Alexa to "order X things from the Whole Foods nearby, but prefer brands I've shopped in the past" and then you're able to confirm the order on a screen, then have it delivered to your house within a few hours, that's a much more compelling offering.
Re: Alexa+
#45If an LLM-based voice assistant/hardware combination works as well as ChatGPT-for-voice works today, I don't think it's a stretch to say that nearly everyone in the coming years will use/have one (the software of course will be portable to whatever device you're using--house, phone, car, etc. But the hardware portion I do believe will be critical because most of the time using it will be at home in a room and in that…
I use LLMs pretty liberally and I can say with 100% certainty I am not going to leave an open microphone in my home hooked up to an LLM connected to a place I do not control that is actively trying to "learn" about me.
Re: Alexa+
#46[flagged]
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Re: Alexa+
#47I've been spoiled by LLMs in my daily work and now want to put the same kind of prompts into search boxes. Not "air fryers" but "air fryers without bluetooth or wifi and less than 3 cooking modes, and no negative reviews about the device failing prematurely." I'm not going to let Alexa plus or minus listen into my whole life, but I would like some that of intelligence when I actually go shopping.
I've noticed that instacart (and by extension, Costco same day shopping) has integrated an LLM into their search. It's awesome to be able to search for "ingredients for a chicken and vegetable roast" and have all the separate ingredients you need be returned. You can also search for things like "healthy snack" or "easy party appetizers".
I think this is a great use case for LLM search since I am able to directly input my intent, and the LLM knows what's in stock at the store I am searching.
Re: Alexa+
#48I've been spoiled by LLMs in my daily work and now want to put the same kind of prompts into search boxes. Not "air fryers" but "air fryers without bluetooth or wifi and less than 3 cooking modes, and no negative reviews about the device failing prematurely." I'm not going to let Alexa plus or minus listen into my whole life, but I would like some that of intelligence when I actually go shopping.
Check out https://exa.ai/ - iirc they use a link-prediction transformer
Re: Alexa+
#49The pricing seems odd. $20/mo for Alexa+, but it's free with a $15/mo Prime subscription? It makes me think that it will only be included with Prime for a short time - long enough to get a lot of Alexa users hooked on it.
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Re: Alexa+
#50I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years. But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.
It’s really awesome for starting timers and playing music though. I also ask it questions and it does pretty well at answering them. For once we get to be on the opposite side of the exploitation curve here. They can provide this service to me for free in perpetuity I hope. I think my Dots were maybe $19 or bought on eBay.