Tag: andy jassy

Amazon Plans to Add ChatGPT-style Conversational Product Search to its Online Store

Amazon.com plans to bring ChatGPT-style product search to its web store, rivalling efforts by Microsoft and Google to weave generative artificial intelligence into their search engines.

The e-commerce giant’s ambitions appear in recent job postings reviewed by Bloomberg News. One listing seeking a senior software development engineer says the company is “reimagining Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience” designed to help users find answers to questions, compare products and receive personalised suggestions.

“We’re looking for the best and brightest across Amazon to help us realise and deliver this vision to our customers right away,” the company said in the listing, which was posted on its jobs board last month. “This will be a once in a generation transformation for Search.”

Another posted job would be part of “a new AI-first initiative to re-architect and reinvent the way we do search through the use of extremely large scale next-generation deep learning techniques.”

Amazon spokesperson Keri Bertolino declined to comment on the job listings. “We are significantly investing in generative AI across all of our businesses,” she said in an email.

Conversational product search has the potential to reshape a key element of Amazon’s core retail business. The search bar at the top of the app and home page in recent years have become the default gateway for millions of shoppers seeking to find a specific product. More than half of US shoppers say they start product searches on Amazon.com, a higher share than Google, according a survey conducted earlier this year by Jungle Scout, a maker of software for sellers on Amazon.

Early deployments of generative AI by Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google and others have been beset by errors in response to basic questions. But they also show how a beefed-up Microsoft Bing or Google search could offer users a more valuable way to find products.

Asking Microsoft Bing — which is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT – to show the five best electric razors pulled up a roster of five products, including citations to reviews from Men’s Health and GQ, along with links to stores selling the products. The same search on Amazon yields a pair of ads, followed by dozens of products.

Amazon’s search experience has been criticised in recent years for the increased share of results devoted to ads and other sponsored content.

Generative AI uses vast quantities of data to assemble large language models that can help create text or images following a prompt. Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said on an earnings call last month that the technology “presents a remarkable opportunity to transform virtually every customer experience.”

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing unit, in April announced a set of services that rely on advances in generative AI. They have yet to be widely released. Meanwhile, the company is hoping to use similar technology to improve its Alexa voice assistant, Insider reported. Amazon is also building a team to use artificial intelligence tools to create photos and videos for advertising campaigns, the Information reported this month.

© 2023 Bloomberg LP

Google I/O 2023 saw Google tell us repeatedly that it cares about AI, alongside the launch of its first foldable phone and Pixel-branded tablet. This year, the company is going to supercharge its apps, services, and Android operating system with AI technology. We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Amazon Mass Layoffs to Continue Till Next Year, Confirms CEO Andy Jassy

The mass layoffs that began in Amazon’s corporate ranks this week will extend into next year, CEO Andy Jassy said Thursday.

In a note sent to employees, Jassy said the company told workers in its devices and books divisions about layoffs on Wednesday. He said it also offered some other employees a voluntary buyout offer.

“I’ve been in this role now for about a year and a half, and without a doubt, this is the most difficult decision we’ve made during that time (and, we’ve had to make some very tough calls over the past couple of years, particularly during the heart of the pandemic),” Jassy wrote in the memo.

Seattle-based Amazon, which has been cutting costs in various areas of its business in the past few months, is undergoing an annual review process to figure out where it can save more money. Jassy said this year’s review is “more difficult” due to the economic landscape and the company’s rapid hiring in the last several years.

Other tech companies — many of which had gone on hiring binges in the past few years — have also been trimming their workforce amid concerns about an economic slowdown. Among others, Facebook parent Meta said last week it would lay off 11,000 people, about 13 percent of its workforce. And Elon Musk, the new Twitter CEO, has slashed the company’s workforce in half this month.

On Tuesday, Amazon notified authorities in California that it would lay off about 260 corporate workers at various facilities in the state. The company has not publicly disclosed how many employees it laid off this week across its entire corporate workforce, though some based in Seattle said they’ve also been let go.

Jassy said the company hasn’t concluded how many other jobs will be impacted. He noted there will be reductions in certain divisions as the company goes through the annual review process, which will continue into next year. As they weigh job cuts, he said leaders at the company will prioritise what matters most to customers and the long-term health of the company.

Amazon is offering severance packages for employees who leave the company. But — unlike Meta, for example — it hasn’t publicly provided details of the package.

The company employs more than 1.5 million workers globally, primarily made up of hourly workers.

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Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy Ordered by US FTC to Testify in Amazon Prime Investigation

Federal regulators are ordering Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy to testify in the government’s investigation of Amazon Prime, rejecting the company’s complaint that the executives are being unfairly harassed in the probe of the popular streaming and shopping service.

The Federal Trade Commission issued an order late Wednesday denying Amazon’s request to cancel civil subpoenas sent in June to Bezos, the Seattle-based company’s former CEO, and Jassy. The order also sets a deadline of Jan. 20 for the completion of all testimony by Bezos, Jassy and 15 other senior executives, who also were subpoenaed.

Jassy took over the helm of the online retail and tech giant from Bezos, one of the world’s richest individuals, in July 2021. Bezos became executive chairman.

Amazon hasn’t made the case that the subpoenas “present undue burdens in terms of scope or timing,” FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson said in the order on behalf of the agency. However, the FTC did agreed to modify some provisions of the subpoenas that it acknowledged appeared too broad.

The FTC has been investigating since March 2021 the sign-up and cancellation practices of Amazon Prime, which has an estimated 200 million members around the globe.

The company said it was disappointed but not surprised that the FTC mostly ruled in favor of its own position, but it was pleased that the agency “walked backed its broadest requests” in the subpoenas.

“Amazon has cooperated with the FTC throughout the investigation and already produced tens of thousands of pages of documents,” the company said in a statement. “We are committed to engaging constructively with FTC staff, but we remain concerned that the latest requests are overly broad and needlessly burdensome, and we will explore all our options.”

In a petition to the FTC filed last month, the company objected to the subpoenas to Bezos and Jassy, saying the agency “has identified no legitimate reason for needing their testimony when it can obtain the same information, and more, from other witnesses and documents.” Amazon said the FTC was hounding Bezos, Jassy and the other executives, calling the information demanded in the subpoenas “overly broad and burdensome.”

The investigation has widened to include at least four other Amazon-owned subscription programs: Audible, Amazon Music, Kindle Unlimited, and Subscribe & Save, as well as an unidentified third-party program not offered by Amazon. The regulators have asked the company to identify the number of consumers who were enrolled in the programs without giving their consent, among other customer information.

With an estimated 150 million US subscribers, Amazon Prime is a key source of revenue, as well as a wealth of customer data, for the company, which runs an e-commerce empire and ventures in cloud computing, personal “smart” tech and beyond. Amazon Prime costs $139 a year. The service added a coveted feature this year by obtaining exclusive video rights to the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.”

Last year, Amazon asked unsuccessfully that FTC Chair Lina Khan step aside from separate antitrust investigations into its business, contending that her public criticism of the company’s market power before she joined the government makes it impossible for her to be impartial. Khan was a fierce critic of tech giants Facebook (now Meta), Google and Apple, as well as Amazon. She arrived on the antitrust scene in 2017, writing an influential study titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” when she was a Yale law student.

Buying an affordable 5G smartphone today usually means you will end up paying a “5G tax”. What does that mean for those looking to get access to 5G networks as soon as they launch? Find out on this week’s episode. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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