Amazon.com Inc is cutting hundreds of jobs in the unit that handles its popular voice assistant Alexa as it plows more resources into artificial intelligence (AI).
In a note to employees on Friday, Amazon’s Alexa and Fire TV vice president Daniel Rausch wrote that the company is eliminating certain roles due to ditching a few initiatives.
“As we continue to invent, 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,” Rausch wrote.
Photo: Reuters
“Several hundred” positions would be cut, he said, without giving a more precise figure.
Seattle-based Amazon is in fierce competition with other tech companies rushing to capitalize on the generative AI craze. The company has been implementing a host of AI initiatives in the past few months, from infusing the technology into customer reviews to providing services that allow developers to build their own AI tools on its AWS cloud infrastructure.
In September, Amazon unveiled an update to Alexa that infuses it with more generative AI features.
The job cuts announced on Friday are to impact employees in the US, Canada and India.
It follows more recent layoffs in Amazon’s gaming and music teams, and also adds to the 27,000 employees the company laid off during the later parts of last year and earlier this year. Amazon’s Alexa unit was also impacted by those cuts.
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