Amazon Alexa Is Getting Claude AI in October Revamp: Report [CNET]

Alexa’s much-anticipated revamp, which could involve a paid subscription, will reportedly rely on Anthropic’s Claude AI.

Amazon’s voice assistant Alex will be getting an infusion of Anthropic’s Claude AI during its revamp next month, according to a report from Reuters that cited five unnamed sources. 

The news, if true, would be a big win for the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company, which recently introduced an intriguing Artifacts feature to its Claude AI model that shows related information in a separate window.

Back in June, reports surfaced that Amazon was planning a major revamp of Alexa, which has cost the company billions of dollars with no sign of a return on that investment. The revamp was said to include a paid tier that would offer more advanced generative AI tech to customers. 

That plan is still in place with a possible “Remarkable” paid tier of Alexa to be introduced as early as October, according to Reuters and reporting from The Washington Post. The new paid version of Alexa could cost $5 to $10 and would be offered alongside a free version of Alexa without some of those advanced features.

“Amazon uses many different technologies to power Alexa,” a spokesperson for Amazon said in an emailed statement. They didn’t directly address whether Claude would be one of those technologies, but pointed out that different AI models serve different purposes and Alexa relies on a mix of models, not all of which are language models.

The partnership isn’t so surprising for those who remember that last year, Amazon invested $4 billion in Anthropic to develop new generative AI models. It also laid off hundreds of members of its Alexa team as a cost-cutting measure after years of multibillion-dollar losses.

According to the Reuters report, Amazon tried to develop its own new Alexa AI tech, but it didn’t perform well, with delays in responses that Anthropic’s technology was able to solve. 

“When it comes to machine learning models, we start with those built by Amazon, but we have used, and will continue to use, a variety of different models — including Titan and future Amazon models, as well as those from partners — to build the best experience for customers,” the Amazon spokesperson added. “That’s one of the key advantages of Amazon Bedrock — it makes it easy for application developers to seamlessly use the world’s highest-performing models, and multiple models, through a single API.”

Anthropic didn’t respond to request for comment.