We’ve been speculating all year that Amazon would start charging for access to Alexa, and we may finally have a timeline. Reuters reports the online retail giant will introduce a paid tier of its smart digital assistant in October. It will be called “Remarkable Alexa,” and Anthropic’s Claude AI will power it up.
According to a handful of people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters, Amazon plans to charge $5-$10/month for Remarkable Alexa powered by Anthropic. This should be no surprise if you remember that last year, Amazon pumped a cool $4 billion into the company. Regular Alexa will continue to operate for free for those using it as a hands-free aid through Echo devices for things like turning the lights on and off, cycling through playlists, and setting timers. You won’t have to pay for those basic tasks you already do now.
For those willing to pony up the monthly subscription, the “remarkable” version of Alexa will tap into Claude’s AI prowess. It will carry on conversations built on prior queries, like when interacting with Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Since its AI is connected to a massive retailer, Amazon will facilitate the paid tier to help you shop without touching an interface. Imagine planning your packing list for a trip, and Remarkable Alexa suggests shirts, pants, and shoes to buy to help you with the weather ahead.
It’ll be interesting to see what Amazon offers as a worthy reason for why you’d pay for Remarkable Alexa in the first place. It’s already confusing why this unreleased capability exists alongside Rufus, another chatbot Amazon launched earlier this year to help with conversational shopping. At least with AI suites like Google’s Gemini, there’s promise of deep integration with a Google or Gmail account. Amazon does have its spectrum of service offerings, though it’s hard to envision how Amazon might differentiate what it does with Remarkable Alexa from what’s already out there.
For instance, I’d like to hear more about how this might work with Amazon’s medical partnerships. Imagine talking to a chatbot, and then it realizes your medical questions are past its pay grade (or its coding—whatever you want to call it) and hooks you up to your doctor at One Medical instead. Perhaps I’m giving away an idea here, but it seems more worth a monthly subscription than paying for personal shopping that you could effectively sit down and do yourself. Amazon also plans to infuse the Remarkable Alexa with better home control since that’s where it made its bread and butter in the heydays of virtual assistants. It’s dubious that it will have much of a selling point as smart home adoption continues to plateau.
When Reuters reached out for comment, an Amazon spokesperson said the company “will continue to use a variety of different models… to build the best experience for customers.” Anthropic declined to comment at all. No one has confirmed what’s next for Alexa yet, but we expect to hear more at Amazon’s upcoming unannounced September event.
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