Alexa is an AI-based voice assistant that can be utilized to set timers.
Amazon is streamlining operations throughout numerous divisions this month, with cutbacks noticed in music, gaming, and sure human assets roles.
In a significant transfer, the US-primarily based tech big Amazon has introduced that it’s reducing a whole lot of jobs within the unit chargeable for its well-liked voice assistant, Alexa, as the corporate shifts its enterprise priorities to give attention to generative synthetic intelligence (AI).
Alexa is an AI-based voice assistant that can be utilized to set timers, ask search queries, play music, or as a house automation hub. According to Reuters, the cuts have an effect on a number of hundred workers engaged on Alexa.
“We’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers – which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI. These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives,” Daniel Rausch, vp of Alexa and Fire TV, stated within the e-mail.
As per the report, Amazon is streamlining operations throughout numerous divisions this month, with cutbacks noticed in music, gaming, and sure human assets roles.
While the vast majority of impacted positions had been throughout the units division, a subset was concerned in Alexa-related tasks in a separate unit,. The broader development entails firms redirecting assets in the direction of generative AI, a know-how able to producing software program code and in depth textual responses primarily based on transient prompts.
Reuters reported in September that morale within the units division had suffered over issues about what some considered as a weak product pipeline. In explicit, individuals acquainted with the matter pointed to the Alexa voice assistant, now practically a decade outdated, as having did not hold tempo within the age of generative synthetic intelligence.
The US-primarily based tech big has struggled to generate any earnings from Alexa, which many individuals use by means of Echo audio system or video screens. Most efforts to generate income from it have centered on easing buying from Amazon.com.
The firm has reduce greater than 27,000 jobs throughout the corporate over the previous yr, a part of a wave of U.S. tech layoffs after the business employed closely individuals through the pandemic.
(with inputs from Reuters)
