Report: Amazon seeks to license news content for revamped Amazon Alexa voice assistant

Photo: Amazon

Amazon wants to boost the generative artificial intelligence capabilities of its Alexa voice assistant. And they want the help of news publishers. Amazon is reportedly seeking licensing agreements with news publishers to allow it to respond to real-time queries about the news.

Alexa currently offers answers from sources like Reuters, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Associated Press, and more. However, it isn't set up to provide real-time answers for breaking news. So, Amazon wants to change this with the updated version of Alexa, which is expected to come out next year.

The tech giant is looking to conduct preliminary tests with publishers it hopes can become launch partners for the feature. It's testing ways to incorporate the news answers into Alexa via text and photo query results. The company isn't supposedly testing generative AI video outputs for now.

The news queries answered by Alexa will be attributed to the partners and they will be compensated through the licensing deal.

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