In a major move, the US-based tech giant Amazon has announced that it is cutting hundreds of jobs in the unit responsible for its popular voice assistant, Alexa, as the company shifts its business priorities to focus on generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Alexa is an AI-based voice assistant that can be used to set timers, ask search queries, play music, or as a home automation hub. According to Reuters, the cuts affect several hundred employees working 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, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, said in the email.
As per the report, Amazon is streamlining operations across various divisions this month, with cutbacks observed in music, gaming, and certain human resources roles.
While the majority of impacted positions were within the devices division, a subset was involved in Alexa-related projects in a separate unit,. The broader trend involves companies redirecting resources towards generative AI, a technology capable of generating software code and extensive textual responses based on brief prompts.
Reuters reported in September that morale in the devices division had suffered over concerns about what some viewed as a weak product pipeline. In particular, people familiar with the matter pointed to the Alexa voice assistant, now nearly a decade old, as having failed to keep pace in the age of generative artificial intelligence.
The US-based tech giant has struggled to generate any profits from Alexa, which many people use through Echo speakers or video screens. Most efforts to make money from it have centered on easing purchasing from Amazon.com.
The company has cut more than 27,000 jobs across the company over the past year, part of a wave of U.S. tech layoffs after the industry hired heavily people during the pandemic.
(with inputs from Reuters)
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