After cutting hundreds of jobs in its device division, Amazon reaffirms its focus on Alexa language assistant. “The Alexa team is still by far the largest in my region,” said Device Manager Dave Limp. “We’re sticking to it.” Although the assistance software is not yet profitable in itself, it does contribute to the sale of smart home technology and music services, among other things. You have plans to make more money with Alexa.
In Amazon’s most recent major job cuts, nearly 2,000 jobs were lost in this area — nearly 10 percent of the workforce. In addition to Alexa, the Limp-led devices division also includes the business of networked Echo speakers and other smart home technology, Ring-branded security cameras, self-driving car development at Zoox, and the Kuiper space-internet satellite project.
Alexa division has become too big
Given the weakened economic development, they had become too big, says Limp. The decommissioning has largely affected projects the public has not yet heard of. “At Alexa, for example, we invested in some health initiatives that seemed important during the pandemic, but now the pandemic is over and some of the early testing hasn’t gone well.”
Amazon currently sees no danger to Alexa in software like ChatGPT, which can talk to people. Conversations are only one part of the outreach program. This also included the ability to control the home network and the integration of music and audiobook services. Amazon also spent a lot of time giving Alexa more character. “ChatGPT doesn’t really have personality.”
Big hype about ChatGPT
Developer OpenAI’s ChatGPT software has been causing a stir since the fall because it mimics human speech so well that it can write different types of texts, including screenplays. The program has been trained for this with enormous amounts of language data. According to Limp, Amazon uses a similar approach to automatically adjust Alexa for different languages. “We used to have to train the models separately for this.” All in all, it’s good that ChatGPT is getting so much attention: “Because it shows what we can achieve.”
At the same time, the group points to the growing use of Alexa. In Germany, for example, the number of customer accounts interacting with the language assistant increased by more than a quarter last year. About 30 percent more users used Alexa to control their smart home, and more than 50 percent used it at least occasionally for shopping. Amazon does not give more precise figures.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
