Amazon.com Inc. engineers are reportedly working on a new, more capable version of Alexa that is expected to become available through a paid subscription. 

Sources familiar with the project told CNBC today that the service is set to roll out later this year. Apple Inc. is also expected to introduce a new version of Siri, its competing artificial intelligence assistant, in the coming months. Both the iPhone maker and Amazon reportedly plan to include new generative AI features in their respective product updates. 

The upcoming paid version of Alexa will reportedly run on an algorithm from the Amazon Titan series of large language models. Introduced last year by the company’s cloud unit, the series comprises three LLMs with varying capabilities and pricing. 

The most advanced Titan model, Amazon Titan Text Premier, can process prompts that contain up to 32,000 tokens’ worth of information. A token is a unit of data that comprises a few letters or numbers. The model includes a RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation, feature that allows it to incorporate information from external applications into prompt responses.

On the other end of the price range Amazon Titan Text Lite. Positioned as the Titan series’ entry-level offering, the model supports prompts with up to 4,000 tokens and is geared towards relatively simple text processing tasks. It’s unclear if Amazon plans to power the next version of Alexa with an existing Titan model or a yet-unannounced future addition to the series. 

According to today’s report, the generative AI model that will underpin Alexa costs two cents per query to run. For comparison, generating 1,000 tokens of output with the entry-level Titan Text Lite model costs 100 times less for Amazon Web Services Inc. customers. That suggests the LLM in the upgraded version of Alexa features a significantly more advanced architecture.

Amazon will reportedly charge for the AI assistant’s upgraded version to offset the cost of the underlying LLM. According to one of CNBC’s sources, the company is considering asking $20 per month, the price at which OpenAI sells ChatGPT Plus. Another tipster indicated that the Alexa subscription might become available for a “single-digit dollar amount.”

The team that develops the AI assistant has reportedly undergone a “massive reorganization” as part of an effort by Amazon to streamline its business operations. It’s believed that many members of the team, which comprises thousands of employees, now focus on developing artificial general intelligence. This is a term for a hypothetical future type of AI that can perform a wide range of tasks with human-like accuracy. 

Photo: Amazon