Amazon lays off Alexa employees as 2010s voice-assistant boom gives way to AI
Enlarge / Amazon's third-gen Echo Show 5. (credit: Amazon)
Amazon is going through yet another round of layoffs, reports Computerworld, and once again the company’s devices-and-services division appears to be bearing the brunt of it. The layoffs will primarily affect the team working on Alexa, the Amazon voice assistant that drives the company's Echo smart speakers and other products.
"Several hundred roles are impacted," the company said in a statement, "a relatively small percentage of the total number of people in the Devices business who are building great experiences for our customers."
Amazon says these layoffs result from "discontinue[d] initiatives" that have been discarded as the company invests more resources in generative AI products; the company didn't specify exactly which initiatives were being discontinued. Amazon hasn't released an AI-powered version of Alexa yet, but it showed "an early preview" of its efforts in September, "based on a new large language model that's been custom-built and specifically optimized for voice interactions."