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#44. Alexa and Claude have a love child
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#44. Alexa and Claude have a love child

And Adobe Firefly is now SFW?

Alexa becomes another $10 sub.

In a plot twist that surprises absolutely no one except my family, Amazon has decided that what their Alexa voice assistant really needs is a brain transplant. The online retail giant, not content with merely accidentally listening to your every word, is now set to make Alexa smarter - or at least putting on a better show.

Enter "Remarkable" Alexa, the soon-to-be-released upgrade that promises to turn your home into a sitcom of AI-powered hijinks. And who's the star of this digital dramedy? None other than Anthropic's Claude, the AI chatbot that apparently impressed Amazon so much, they decided to outsource Alexa's intelligence altogether.

Why Claude, you ask?

Well, it seems Amazon's homegrown AI’s lagging response times put us to mind of the comfort provided by a 28.8 baud modem - taking a leisurely 6-7 seconds to respond. In the fast-paced world of asking your speaker what the weather's like, that's practically an eternity.

Photo: Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance/Getty

Does Amazon truly give a sh-t about your Alexa experience?

Maybe. Here are two items they probably find more prescient:

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