Amazon seeks to work with news outlets to improve new Alexa assistant with gen AI – report

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is reaching out to news publishers for licensing their content, which would be used for the next generation of Alexa voice assistant, slated to debut next year with generative AI, Axios reported Tuesday.

The tech giant is preliminarily testing with several publishers who can serve as launch partners for the revamped Alexa coming out late next year, the report said, citing a person familiar with the plans. It is looking to partner with an array of content providers at local and national levels.

The company is currently testing new ways to incorporate news answers into Alexa via text and photo query results but isn’t testing generative AI video outputs as part of its revamped Alexa offering at this time, the report said.

Publishers will be compensated for their content via a licensing agreement, and answers provided by Alexa to news queries will be attributed to the publishing partners, according to the report.

The company wants to add more news partners as it scales the devices and platforms Alexa powers going forward, the report said.