Amazon Lays Off Hundreds of Employees
The latest news from Amazon, reportedly "Amazon Lays Off Hundreds of Employees Who Take Care of Alexa". Alexa itself is a virtual assistant. The layoffs come as Amazon shifts its business priorities to a focus on generative artificial intelligence.
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| Amazon cut "hundreds" of employees in its Alexa division (Photo: AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES) |
According to an anonymous email, layoffs were made to hundreds of employees working on Alexa. A spokeswoman for Amazon, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to go into detail about the number of employees affected by the layoffs.
Alexa is a virtual assistant or voice assistant technology
"We're revamping some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to our customers, including maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI. This shift makes us stop some initiatives," said Vice President of Alexa and Fire TV Daniel Rausch quoted from Reuters, Friday (11/18/2023).
Amazon pulled back employees in various divisions this November, including music and gaming divisions as well as some jobs in human resources (HR).
Also, read: OpenAI CEO asked to return, a day after being fired.
A spokesperson explained that while most of the jobs affected by the layoffs are in the devices division, some are also working on Alexa-related products in different units. This is in line with the trend of companies shifting HR to generative AI technology that can create software code and long text responses from short commands.
At the end of October, the device unit was known to have a new leader. That figure is Panos Panay who used to work at Microsoft. He succeeds David Limp, an employee who has worked for Amazon for 13 years and now heads Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company.
Alexa is a virtual assistant or voice assistant technology that can be used to manage time, search keywords, play music, or become a home automation center.
In September 2023, Reuters reported that Amazon's employee morale in the devices division was falling because it was considered weak to compete. In particular, several people familiar with the matter said that the assumption referred to Alexa's failing to keep pace with generative artificial intelligence.
Amazon explained at the time that its devices and services were indeed not profitable. However, the company is known to maintain the product although it did not mention the loss figure.
Alexa is known to compete with Alphabet from Google and Siri from Apple. Despite this, Rausch admitted to remain optimistic about Alexa.
"Incorporating large new language models into personal AI that can pass on voice, has been and continues to be an enormous challenge," Rausch wrote using another term for generative AI.
Amazon as of November 2023 is known to have cut more than 27,000 jobs. The company has been one of those following a wave of layoffs in U.S. tech after the industry hired large numbers of people during the pandemic.
The latest employee cuts come as Amazon issues a net income report in the third quarter of 2023. The amount of net profit earned by Amazon was far from analysts' estimates, but the company's revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 is expected to be as expected. The fourth quarter is said to be the most important for Amazon because it includes holiday shopping.