Amazon’s efforts to generate revenue through its Alexa-enabled devices have encountered significant challenges, reportedly resulting in losses exceeding $25 billion from 2017 to 2021. Internal documents and sources familiar with the matter, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, indicate that despite having hundreds of millions of customers, many users primarily utilize devices like the Echo and Kindle for basic tasks such as setting alarms rather than making purchases through Amazon.
A former senior employee expressed concerns about the situation, stating, “We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer.” In response to these ongoing issues, Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, is exploring potential solutions, including the introduction of a paid version of its voice assistant. However, some engineers working on this initiative reportedly doubt its potential effectiveness.
An Amazon representative highlighted that the company is “focused on the value we create when customers use our services, not just when they buy our devices,” and emphasized that the Devices & Services organization has established several profitable ventures for Amazon.
Additionally, Amazon’s newly introduced AI-powered Alexa, showcased in September, is said to be far from completion, with former employees citing a lack of sufficient data and access to necessary chips for the advanced language model. Furthermore, the company has reportedly shifted its priorities to developing generative AI for its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, rather than advancing the AI capabilities of Alexa.
In response to these claims, Amazon asserted that former employees are misinformed about its current AI projects and that its Artificial General Intelligence team has access to both its proprietary Trainium chips and Nvidia GPUs while maintaining its goal to develop the best personal assistant available.