Hot development coming from Amazon: Reports claim it's going to advertise its voice assistant service, Alexa+. This is feeding into the discussion of privacy and user experience, and on the other end, the convenience it lends to users.
Defining Alexa+ and How It's Different From The Rest
Alexa+ is the premium version of the voice assistant from Amazon. This is the advanced and super personalized version of basic Alexa. Alexa boasts advanced music streaming, smart-home configuration, as well as AI conversing skills. Somehow, allowing ads in the proposed advanced version will ruin the user's experience.
The Reason For Amazon's Ad Thoughts
Amazon aims to monetize its voice service. It intends to finance the same way YouTube, Spotify, or any other streamer make money through ad displays-on Alexa+.
In other words, when asking for a recipe from the Alexa+ service, it would then follow that the particular brand associated with that recipe will also be included.
What That Means For The User?
Privacy Issues: Voice assistants are always listening. Another consideration that comes with ads to be served is: When will those ads start using my voice, and how will that happen?"
User experience suffers: Users of Alexa+ have paid for ad-free experience. Inserting ads into the service beats the service's purpose.
Extent of alternatives users will be searching: In cases where advertisements develop to a point where they interfere with users' experiences, users might be tempted to look elsewhere for other options like Google Assistant or Apple Siri.
Good Or ill?
If so, then how, how much, under what kind of guiding principle concerning ads content, matters greatly. It would work out to be a good thing if really smart and relevant ads are displayed with minimum or no probability of spoiling user experience, but at the same time may bring in a lot of resentment if mean-spirited ads appear and present no clear way for an easy opt-out.
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