Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.
I’d pay $20 or $30 a year, especially if it meant they’d actually, like, improve the service (which has been almost 100% the same for me for the last 4 years or so).
But $60 to $120 would make me move elsewhere
If you have an Amazon Echo (or whatever they call it) in your home, then you already pay them by letting it spy on you, your family, and any guests that come over. Even if they improved the service (they won’t), why would you pay $20 or $30 a year for it?
What info are they getting from me telling it to turn on the lights?
The service it provides I would expect to either pay a reasonable marginal fee, or do everything locally.
If the Home Assistant voice Appliance stuff can get its shit together and I can get one for reasonable prices I will move to that (or something like it) instead.
It shouldn’t take a subscription to manage turning on lights.
You can very easily do it locally.
With voice control?
Yes
https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/
Which is why I said
Unfortunately, when I looked most recently it still wasn’t even remotely close to being ready. Particularly the hardware options.
They say that you can build one for $13.
https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/thirteen-usd-voice-remote/
They also have on their roadmap that they’re working to see if they can build or engineer
outor whatever an all in one, easy to set up voice satellite hardware as one of their next up priorities.https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/06/12/roadmap-2024h1/
Once the second thing happens, assuming it’s any good, then I will look into switching again.
Until then, there don’t seem to be many great options.