Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, is laying off 5% of its staff, according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.
Per the memo, Audible CEO Bob Carrigan praised staff for a strong 2023 and assured them that the business was in good shape… but, due to the “increasingly challenging landscape,” the company is still making cuts.
Now, just this week, Twitch laid off another 500 employees, and Amazon’s MGM Studios and Prime Video let go of “several hundred” employees.
Prime Video aside, all of these organizations at Amazon — Twitch, MGM Studios and Audible — came to the company via acquisition.
Audible has been part of Amazon since 2008, when it was acquired for $300 million.
The Amazon-owned livestreaming platform will cut 35% of its staff, or roughly 500 employees, Bloomberg reports, and will announce the reduction as early as this week.
Shortly after Twitch co-founder and longtime CEO Emmett Shear handed the reigns to its now-CEO Dan Clancy, the company laid off 400 employees.
Twitch faces steep operating costs to support livestream content at such a large scale.
In a 2022 blog post, Clancy stated that each high-volume streamer on Twitch costs the company about $1,000 per month, citing Amazon Web Service’s interactive video rates.
“Delivering high definition, low latency, always available live video to nearly every corner of the world is expensive,” Clancy wrote.
But the company will be the first to support Matter Casting, the video- and audio-beaming feature of the Matter smart home standard, on its smart displays and smart TVs, Amazon announced this morning at CES 2024.
Once Matter casting comes to Amazon’s Prime Video app for Android and iOS, users will be able to cast content to supported Amazon devices — starting with the Echo Show 15 — by tapping the new dedicated Matter Casting button.
Beyond the Echo Show 15, Amazon says that Matter Casting support will arrive on Fire TVs including smart TVs from Panasonic with Fire TV built in, and — on the app side — Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, Starz and ZDF later this year.
Tellingly, Google announced this week that its casting tech, Chromecast, will be built into all of LG’s new TVs — but gave no mention of Matter Casting.
The Matter Casting spec — which was developed with major input from Amazon — can accomplish more than casting, in theory.
In September 2023, Amazon announced to developers that it would be launching new tools to build LLM-powered experiences.
Today, the company revealed three developers delivering new generative AI-powered Alexa experiences, including AI chatbot platform Character.AI, AI music company Splash and Voice AI game developer Volley.
All three experiences are available in the Amazon Alexa Skill Store.
Volley introduced its generative AI-powered “20 Questions” game, giving Alexa users a modern version of the well-known game.
The game uses generative AI to interact with users by asking them questions, providing hints and explaining “yes or no questions” if the human opponent gets stuck.
In September 2023, Amazon announced to developers that it would be launching new tools to build LLM-powered experiences.
Today, the company revealed three developers delivering new generative AI-powered Alexa experiences, including AI chatbot platform Character.AI, AI music company Splash and Voice AI game developer Volley.
All three experiences are available in the Amazon Alexa Skill Store.
Volley introduced its generative AI-powered “20 Questions” game, giving Alexa users a modern version of the well-known game.
The game uses generative AI to interact with users by asking them questions, providing hints and explaining “yes or no questions” if the human opponent gets stuck.
After recently turning to generative AI to enhance its product reviews, e-commerce giant Amazon today shared how it’s now using AI technology to help customers shop for apparel online.
With the personalized size recommendations, Amazon Fashion used AI to develop a deep learning algorithm that will help customers find their best-fitting size across a variety of styles.
This system works by considering the size relationship between brands’ size systems, the product’s reviews, and the customer’s own fit preferences.
With a Fit Insights Tool from Amazon Fashion, sellers are provided with an understanding of customer’s fit needs so they can improve how they communicate sizing to customers — e.g.
Beyond the customer review highlights, Amazon also debuted generative AI tools to help sellers write their product descriptions and enhance their product images.
Amazon announced today that it’s launching Health Condition Programs, a new initiative that aims to make it easier for people to discover digital health benefits to help manage chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Digital health company Omada Health is Amazon’s launch partner for the new initiative.
Omada Health’s over 20 million eligible members can now discover and enroll in Omada’s programs for diabetes prevention, diabetes, and hypertension through Amazon.
Members can initiate a general coverage check via the Amazon Health webpage to see if they are eligible for a program.
“Many people aren’t aware of the health care benefits they’re eligible for, that are typically no cost or subsidized by their employer or insurance plan.
I don’t know that anyone expected such a massive deal to simply skate past regulators — particularly with all of the heat Amazon has received for privacy concerns and noncompetitive practices over the last decade.
At the same time, I don’t think too many of us assumed that we would be barreling into 2024 with this big, open question mark.
The deal has already been greenlit by a number of governmental bodies, but the process has felt drawn out at every step.
If you’re a regular Actuator reader, you likely already know my feelings about outside scrutiny of business practices (I’m generally pro), but I expected something definitive by now.
Amazon will be just fine, of course, but I can’t imagine this waiting game has been easy on iRobot, which underwent two rounds of layoffs in mid-2022 and early 2023.
Amazon is doubling down on its free, ad-supported content with Fire TV Channels. The new experience will be available on Fire TV devices this week and will be constantly updated…
The Amazon CEO said that the company is building a more “generalized and capable” large language model to power Alexa. This would give Alexa the ability to recognize and summarize…
