Amazon is pushing more resources into artificial intelligence (AI) and as a result, the company is slashing hundreds of jobs in the unit that handles its popular voice assistant Alexa.
On Friday, in a letter to employees, Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, wrote that the company is stopping certain roles because it is ditching some 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, reported AP.
Rausch informed that “several hundred” positions would be cut. However, he did not give a more precise figure.
Amazon, a Seattle-based company, is in fierce competition with other tech companies rushing to capitalize on the generative AI trend. In the last few months, the company has executed a host of AI initiatives – from infusing the technology into customer reviews to delivering services that permit developers to build their own AI tools on its AWS cloud platform.
Amazon, in September, unveiled an update to Alexa that infuses it with more generative AI features.
Job cuts to affect USA, India, and Canada
The job cuts announced on Friday will affect employees in the USA, India, and Canada.
It follows more recent layoffs in the gaming and music teams of Amazon and also adds to the 27,000 employees the company laid off during the later parts of last year and earlier this year. Alexa’s unit of Amazon was also affected by those job cuts.