[jedberg]

> because Amazon did get on the agent bandwagon with Alexa Plus

Which just launched last year, about four years after ChatGPT had AI voice chat. And it costs extra money to cover the costs. And as you aptly point out, all the guardrails they had to put in made the experience less than ideal.

> Also, my Alexa does advertise stuff to me when I talk to it.

Yes, that is how they try to make money. And it's gotten worse. But how many times does it get you to buy something?

[ghrl]

I would say that depends. When it tries to upsell Prime subscriptions into even more Amazon subscriptions I always interrupt it and say the command again so it stops, but a few times it told me "this item in your cart is on sale by some %" and that did make me buy the item.