According to the Business Insider (BI) report, Amazon is going through a period of massive layoffs, with plans to lay off around 10,000 employees. The hardest hit area is the voice assistant Alexa, which has been falling out of favor in e-commerce. What to know why this is happening? Read the article below and learn the reason for the failure of the Alexa.
Read more:New in sight: learn how Amazon will revolutionize music streaming
see more
Threat to Netflix: Google's free service competes with streaming
Google develops AI tool to help journalists in…
Why is Alexa causing so much loss?
The Alexa voice assistant was created 10 years ago, a pioneer that was widely copied by apple and by Google. However, this hardware never managed to generate a continuous cash income for Amazon, and by the end of 2022 the loss could reach $10 billion. The layoffs only show that the company is tired of losing money. Find out what the Business Insider report says.
What does the Alexa status report say?
In the BI report, Amazon employees described the moment as a “division in crisis”. Plans to monetize Alexa failed and layoffs were the result of attempts to change this scenario.
When it first launched, the voice assistant was considered Amazon's pet technology. But in the 2019 crisis, it already showed fruitless profits, generating a hiring freeze and a lack of interest in the project.
Amazon's goal with creating Alexa was to make money when people use the device to buy items from the company by voice command, not when they purchase the product. However, that plan never materialized.
People didn't trust an artificial intelligence with their money to buy items without seeing them. Therefore, interactions focused on trivial commands, such as playing music.
In 2020, the hardware team stopped betting on the technology due to lack of profit, but the president, Andy Jassy, said he still has conviction in rescuing the product, but only after making employees.
In the end, BI placed Alexa, with 71.6 million users, third among voice assistants, behind Google Assistant with 81.5 million and Apple's Siri with 77.6 million.
Are voice assistants doomed?
Google Assistant has voiced similar issues to Alexa. With the device consuming server time and causing huge losses, the company acted exactly like Amazon, laying off staff. Meanwhile, Apple is focusing on the results of investing in continuous Siri ads.