Like its rival, Google, Amazon has launched an AI-powered video generator — but it’s only for advertisers at the moment, and somewhat limited in what it can do. Today at its Accelerate conference, Amazon unveiled Video generator, which turns a single product image into video showcases of that product after some amount of processing. The […]
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Amazon sellers now have access to an AI assistant designed to help grow their business by answering questions about their metrics, and later, helping to resolve issues that arise. The assistant, code-named Project Amelia and built on AWS’s Amazon Bedrock, is available in beta to U.S. sellers, starting Thursday. The retail giant says select U.S. […]
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Enlarge / Warehouse workers at the STL8 Amazon Fulfillment Center marched on the boss Wednesday to demand a $25 an hour minimum wage for all workers. (credit: via Justice Speaks)
Amazon currently faces disgruntled workers in every direction.
Office workers are raging against CEO Andy Jassy's return to office mandate, Fortune reported—which came just as a leaked document reportedly showed that Amazon is also planning to gut management, Business Insider reported. Drivers by the hundreds are flocking to join a union to negotiate even better work conditions, CNBC reported, despite some of the biggest concessions in Amazon's history. And hundreds more unionized warehouse workers are increasingly banding together nationwide to demand a $25 an hour minimum wage. On Wednesday, workers everywhere were encouraged to leave Jassy a voicemail elevating workers' demands for a $25 minimum wage.
This momentum has been building for years after drivers unionized in 2021. And all this collective fury increasingly appears to be finally pressuring Amazon into negotiating better conditions for some workers.
Enlarge / A promotional image for Amazon's 4-Series Fire TVs. (credit: Amazon)
A lawsuit is seeking to penalize Amazon for allegedly providing "fake list prices and purported discounts" to mislead people into buying Fire TVs.
As reported by Seattle news organization KIRO 7, a lawsuit seeking class-action certification and filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington on September 12 [PDF] claims that Amazon has been listing Fire TV and Fire TV bundles with "List Prices" that are higher than what the TVs have recently sold for, thus creating "misleading representation that customers are getting a 'Limited time deal.'" The lawsuit accuses Amazon of violating Washington's Consumer Protection Act.
The plaintiff, David Ramirez, reportedly bought a 50-inch 4-Series Fire TV in February for $299.99. The lawsuit claims the price was listed as 33 percent off and a "Limited time deal" and that Amazon "advertised a List Price of $449.99, with the $449.99 in strikethrough text.” As of this writing, the 50-inch 4-Series 4K TV on Amazon is marked as having a "Limited time deal" of $299.98.
Amazon’s Buy with Prime program, which lets shoppers with a Prime membership purchase items from third-party stores and check out using their Amazon account, is getting a new payment option: PayPal. Amazon announced Wednesday that Prime customers can use PayPal to check out on websites that’ve integrated the Buy with Prime API. The company also […]
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Amazon has named long-time executive Samir Kumar as the new head of its India consumer business, a month after its domestic business' head resigned.
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AWS’ weird AI-powered keyboard experiment, DeepComposer, is no more. In a blog post today, the company announced it’s shutting down the 5-year-old DeepComposer, a physical MIDI piano and AWS service that let users compose songs with the help of generative AI. “After careful consideration, we have made the decision to end support for AWS DeepComposer,” […]
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Enlarge / Amazon fulfillment center in Las Vegas, Nevada. (credit: Getty Images | 4kodiak)
Amazon has told staff they must return to the office five days a week from the start of next year, one of the strictest corporate crackdowns on remote working that has become commonplace since the pandemic.
“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” chief executive Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees globally on Monday. “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective.
“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward,” Jassy said. He added exceptions would be made for employees with a sick child, family emergencies, or coding projects that needed a more isolated environment.
Amazon said today that it will host its Prime Day-like sales event, “Prime Big Deals Day,” on October 8-9. For the last two years, the ecommerce company has scheduled its fall event in October and has continued that tradition this year. Apart from the U.S., this event will take place in countries including Australia, Austria, […]
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a memo to the company’s employees Monday morning, calling for a full return to office at the start of 2025. For the last 15 months, Amazon employees have been expected to work in the office three days per week. Now Jassy expects five days of in-person work from employees, with […]
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An Indian antitrust regulator has found that Amazon and Flipkart, owned by Walmart, violated local competition laws, according to a report from Reuters. The finding presents a new challenge for the e-commerce giants in a market where online retail growth remains modest at under 15% and quick-commerce is increasingly snatching business from Amazon India and […]
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Rufus, Amazon’s recently launched, shopping-focused chatbot, is getting ads soon. That’s according to a changelog published by Amazon this week (first spotted by AdWeek), which states that sponsored ads could soon start appearing in placements for Rufus users in the U.S. Ads will be shown based on Amazon search and conversational context, Amazon says, and […]
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Het bericht Amazon Alexa is nu beschikbaar in het Nederlands verscheen eerst op DutchCowboys.
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