‘Every single’ Amazon team is working on generative AI, says CEO

‘Every single’ Amazon team is working on generative AI, says CEO

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

“Every single one” of Amazon’s businesses has “multiple generative AI initiatives going right now,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call on Thursday. The company offers infrastructure and services via AWS that can help power many generative artificial intelligence applications, which Jassy did discuss on the call, but he also stressed just how important AI is across the company as a whole.

Here’s more from Jassy about those generative AI initiatives:

They range from things that help us be more cost-effective and streamlined in how we run operations and various businesses, to the absolute heart of every customer experience in which we offer. It’s true in our Stores business, it’s true in our AWS business, it’s true in our advertising business, it’s true in all our devices — and you can just imagine what we’re working on with respect to Alexa there — it’s true in our entertainment businesses... every single one. It is going to be at the heart of what we do. It’s a significant investment and focus for us.

We could see something from these initiatives soon; I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon announced some generative AI-based improvements for Alexa at its upcoming devices event on September 20th. (Perhaps those will be powered by the improved large language model (LLM) it’s working on for Alexa, which is something Jassy discussed in April’s earnings call.) And job listings from earlier this year indicated that Amazon was hiring to help improve Amazon Search with an “interactive conversational experience.”

Jassy wasn’t the only CEO to hype up AI this earnings season. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that AI and machine learning are “virtually embedded in every product that we build.” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai called Google’s new Search Generative Experience “the next major evolution in search.” And Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed how the company is working on “a number of new products,” including creative tools and AI agents, that it’s building using its LLaMA LLM.