Visitors visit Amazon Alexa during IFA, the international electronics and innovation fair, in Berlin on September 10, 2019.
Nurfoto | getty images
Amazon The company confirmed it began laying off “several hundred” people in its Alexa division on Friday as part of a broader belt-tightening that has been ongoing since last year.
Daniel Roush, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, sent a note to employees informing them of the job cuts, according to a copy of the memo shared by an Amazon spokesperson.
“As we continue to innovate, we are shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know works most for customers,” Roush wrote in the memo. matters – including maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generic AI.” , which was first reported by GeekWire. “These changes are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, resulting in the elimination of several hundred roles.”
Amazon did not specify which Alexa initiatives it was shutting down as a result of the move.
The company will reach out to affected employees in the US and Canada on Friday. Rausch said employees in India will be notified next week, while the timing in other regions depends on local regulations.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been cutting costs since last year as the company anticipates an economic downturn and slower growth in its core retail business. The company initiated the largest layoffs in its history, cutting more than 27,000 jobs, and eliminating many of its non-profit initiatives. Amazon previously cut staff in its devices and services division, which includes Alexa.
Since its launch in 2014, Amazon has invested heavily in Alexa and hired top talent to develop the technology, primarily at the direction of Jeff Bezos, who first introduced Alexa and strongly Believed that voice would play an important role in how people interact with computers. Future. At one point, Amazon had 5,000 people working on Alexa and Echo.
Alexa and digital assistants like it were once groundbreaking technology, but they face increasing competition from generative artificial intelligence and chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In September, Amazon released updates to Alexa that involve generative AI, such as composing messages on behalf of users. The unit overseeing Alexa also has a new leader, after longtime devices chief Dave Limp left to join Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin. Limp was replaced by veteran Microsoft executive Panos Panay.
Roush said Amazon is “encouraged by the progress we’re making with Alexa,” noting that users have interacted with the virtual assistant “millions of times every hour,” and there are more than 500 million Alexa devices in consumers’ homes. There are devices.
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