An important update for Alexa, the voice command assistant, has been announced by tech giant Amazon. Unnamed sources, however, claim that the business has announced that consumers would only be able to access the latest version of Alexa through a monthly subscription.

Amazon is working to improve Alexa’s conversational capabilities. According to CNBC, the upgraded digital assistant would contain AI features akin to those of ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot. The post does not, however, specify when Amazon plans to release the update. Titan, Amazon’s huge language model, will be used by the upgraded digital assistant.

The team’s current goal is to make Alexa a useful tool that can withstand the newest AI competition and warrants the resources and personnel Amazon has committed to the project, according to CNBC.

“According to the three sources, it has experienced a significant reorganization, with a large portion of the team moving to the artificial general intelligence, or AGI, team. Others brought attention to the fat that exists within Alexa’s thousands-strong staff.”

Although Amazon intends to charge a monthly fee for its enhanced Alexa assistant, the CNBC article did not provide an exact amount for the membership. The story did, however, clarify that this expense would not be covered by the company’s $14.99/month Amazon Prime subscription service.

It should be noted that generative AI features were the focus of major tech company announcements in the past, including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. These businesses provided their cutting-edge AI capabilities to the public at no extra cost. This contains the recently released ChatGPT-4o model from OpenAI.

According to the story, Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon, requested the update because he was dissatisfied with Alexa’s present capabilities. Alexa was initially released by the firm in 2014. According to the post, when Jassy inquired about the score of a live sports game during a meeting, his displeasure with the voice command assistance became apparent. Still, it was unable to supply the necessary response. Jassy voiced his discontent as the solution was really simple to locate.

According to the report, over 500 million devices—including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, smart speakers, and displays—use Amazon’s voice command assistant. The post provided no information on the potential release date of the Alexa AI update.