Another sign that Amazon is changing course on Alexa is the company’s warning to developers that it will soon stop paying them to build Alexa skills.
As Bloomberg discovered, Amazon posted a notice on its Alexa development page that it would soon end its seven-year-old program that awarded Amazon Web Services credits to developers who developed and published Alexa skills.
The notice states that Amazon will no longer issue AWS credits for Alexa skills after June 30.
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Bloomberg also reports that Amazon will stop monthly cash payments to developers of popular Alexa skills, although Alexa developers will still be allowed to earn revenue from in-app purchases.
In a statement to TechHive, an Amazon spokesperson said the company has decided to “discontinue” the rewards programs because they have “reached their end.”
“These are older programs that were launched back in 2017 to help newer developers interested in building skills accelerate their progress,” the representative said. “Today, customers have over 160,000 skills available to them, a well-established Alexa developer community, and new LLM-based tools that will help developers build new experiences for Alexa.”
According to the Bloomberg report, less than 1 percent of Alexa developers still used the two rewards programs.
Amazon originally viewed Alexa skills as a key revenue driver for its then-emerging voice assistant. But while some early Alexa Skills developers were raking in thousands of dollars each month for their Alexa Skills, many others found that the effort wasn’t worth the meager returns.
Amazon also didn’t make much money from Alexa skills, Bloomberg reports, and so began reducing the amount of cash it pays Alexa developers in 2020.
Amazon’s move follows the unveiling last fall of a revamped version of Alexa based on Amazon’s new major voice model.
The new Alexa is capable of, among other things, having smooth, open conversations, writing stories and invitations, responding to a user’s emotions, and following natural language commands to control smart home devices.
Amazon executives said the company was considering charging for this new “superhuman” version of Alexa, while the original Alexa would remain free.
However, there is reportedly disagreement at Amazon over whether it is possible to charge extra for a so-called “Alexa Plus,” with the AI-powered Alexa reportedly “falling short of expectations.”
Updated shortly after publication with a statement from Amazon.