Will Shanklin has been writing about gadgets, tech and their impact on humanity since 2011. Before joining Engadget, he spent five years creating and leading the mobile technology section for New Atlas. His work has also appeared on SlashGear, TechRadar, Digital Trends, AppleInsider, Android Central, HuffPost and others.
Amazon has decided to cut off paid perks for Alexa developers. The company confirmed to Engadget on Wednesday that it will end the Alexa Developer Rewards Program at the end of June. A second program that rewards developers for using Amazon Web Services as the backend for their Alexa apps will wrap up at the same time.
Amazon described the move as a case of phasing out an old project that had run its course. “These are older programs launched back in 2017 as a way to help newer developers interested in building skills accelerate their progress,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote to Engadget. “Today, there are over 160,000 skills available for customers, a well-established Alexa developer community, and new LLM-powered tools that will help developers build new experiences for Alexa. These older programs have simply run their course, so we decided to sunset them.” The company told me the program launched when developers were still learning to make voice apps, and it was designed to help them get started. Amazon told Engadget that fewer than one percent of developers were using the program. It said Alexa developers will still get paid for in-app purchases from their Alexa skills, adding that the cost of making them has gone down while developer knowledge has gone up. The Alexa Developer Rewards Program was created to incentivize developers who made high-quality skills for the assistant. Launched in 2017, when, the program paid developers bonuses for skills that met engagement thresholds in specific categories. It was part of Amazon’s quest toNow, the renewed interest in AI assistants is about generative AI, which can handle many of the same tasks as Alexa’s skills . At its fall 2023 devices event, Amazon previewed a next-generationreports that third-party apps weren’t making Amazon much money . The company cut the available funds for Alexa developer payments in 2020. Amazon alsoin its Alexa division late last year. Meanwhile, Google threw in the towel long ago: It eliminated third-party voice apps for Google Assistant altogether in 2022.
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