Amazon is switching gears on its Alexa product, and it’s doing so by cutting “several hundred” roles within its Alexa division to focus more on investing in generative artificial intelligence, according to an internal memo.
“Our investments in generative AI are also bringing our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before,” said Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, in the memo.
Related: Read the leaked email that Amazon sent to the employees it just fired
In a September announcement, Amazon unveiled its plans to make Alexa “smarter and more conversational” by using AI. Among a few of the many changes it aims to implement, the company is planning on giving Alexa the ability to understand body language by using the device’s camera and voice inputs to detect presence and understand nonverbal cues.
Implementing AI into Alexa will also give it more personality by granting it the ability to have “a point of view, making conversations more engaging.”
“We’ve been on that journey to create that superhuman assistant for more than a decade now,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon devices, at a September event from Amazon’s HQ2. “But with generative AI, it’s now within reach.”
Consumers have expressed a lack of trust in Alexa in the past due to privacy concerns. In a recent research study by the University of Oxford, participants in the study, who implemented Alexa into their everyday lives, were interviewed about their opinions on using the device.
It was found that participants often kept Alexa out of specific rooms, limited the tasks they allowed the device to perform and one participant even said that they unplugged the assistant altogether.
“These choices were characterized by distrust, or a more general desire to keep the VA away from more intimate parts of their lives,” read the study.
Amazon’s latest round of layoffs come after it laid off over 180 employees earlier this week in its gaming division due to it cutting its Crown Channel and Game Growth initiatives, citing that it wants to focus more on Prime Gaming.
Related: Amazon announces most groundbreaking partnership yet
Employees that were laid off in the Alexa division will be given “separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, external job placement support, and paid time to conduct your job search,” according to the memo.
“While this was a hard decision to make, we remain very optimistic about the future of Alexa,” said Rausch.
You can read the full memo below.
“From: Daniel Rausch
Subject: An Important Update for our Alexa Team
Team,
We’re really encouraged by the progress we’re making with Alexa: customers are interacting with Alexa tens of millions of times every hour and there are more than half a billion Alexa devices in customers’ homes. Our investments in generative AI are also bringing our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before. 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. These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated.
Today, we will reach out to colleagues in the U.S. and Canada who are impacted by these role reductions. Notification emails will be sent out shortly, and we expect all notifications in the U.S. and Canada to be completed this morning (Pacific time). We will communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week, and are following local processes in other regions, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies, and possibly resulting in longer timelines to communicate.
To those of you impacted by these reductions, please know we did not make this decision lightly. I want to sincerely thank you for all your hard work and dedication to the organization, and to our customers. We are committed to supporting you, and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, external job placement support, and paid time to conduct your job search.
While this was a hard decision to make, we remain very optimistic about the future of Alexa. I want to reiterate that Alexa remains an incredibly important part of our business. I’m proud of the innovation we’ve driven, and continue to drive. Incorporating a new large language model into a voice-forward, personal AI, has been and continues to be an enormous scientific and engineering challenge. I’m excited for our customers to soon experience the future of Alexa, and to hear their feedback, so that we can continue to invent and evolve the experience for them.
As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or anyone on the leadership team if you have any questions.
-Daniel”
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