Amazon's paid Alexa service is finally nearing launch

After years and years of everyone having access to the same version of its initially competition-conquering Alexa smart assistant, Amazon is apparently ripping up the rulebook and planning a major overhaul of its systems.

We've previously reported on plans to add a subscription service for a smarter, AI-driven version and now, according to The Washington Post (notably owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos), the service is said to be ready for launch.

It'll allegedly include the arrival of a premium tier for those willing to pay extra for a more experimental and advanced version of Alexa. This would seemingly include some new AI features that aren't available to everyone.

The most prominent example supplied is an AI-generated "Smart Briefing" each day that summarises a few news articles based on the user's indicated preferences. This would apparently fill a gap in current affairs knowledge that Alexa has suffered from in recent years compared to the likes of Google Assistant. 

However, with other assistants now trained to decline questions about current politics, to mitigate the risk of misinformation spreading just before a pivotal US presidential election, the new Alexa features could end up becoming controversial. 

Other examples posited about AI features include one where Echo and other Alexa-powered devices could help you come up with recipes to cook based on the ingredients you tell it you have to hand; another option would see the assistant able to have conversations about items you might like to buy, ostensibly to help you learn more about a device or item before you decide to purchase it. 

According to internal documents viewed by the Washington Post, the premium version of Alexa could cost up to $10 a month to access, but the "classic Alexa" will remain free. It would seem that none of this is yet final internally, however. 

This overhaul isn't a total secret, though – Amazon actually talked publicly about how it was going to evolve and renew Alexa's relevance back in late 2023. It probably didn't bank on its plans spilling in this way though, and it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for us to hear from Amazon about any of this through official channels.