Tag: Amazon

  • Why Amazon is betting on ‘automated reasoning’ to reduce AI’s hallucinations – WSJ

    Amazon.com’s cloud-computing unit is looking to “automated reasoning” to provide hard, mathematical proof that AI models’ hallucinations can be stopped, at least in certain areas. By doing so, Amazon Web Services could unlock millions of dollars worth of AI deals with businesses, some analysts say. Simply put, automated reasoning aims to use mathematical proof to assure that a system will or will not behave a certain way. It’s somewhat similar to the idea that AI models can “reason” through problems, but in this case, it’s used to check that the models themselves are providing accurate answers.

  • Amazon plans to unveil next-generation Alexa AI later this month – MacRumors

    Amazon is using AI models from Anthropic’s Claude rather than relying solely on its in-house AI technology, as early versions of Amazon AI had trouble responding in a timely manner. Amazon initially planned to roll out the updated version of Alexa last year, but ended up pushing the debut back. It is important for Amazon to get changes to Alexa right, because there are more than 100 million active Alexa users and over 500 million Alexa-enabled devices have been sold. Amazon is aiming to convert some of those Alexa users into paying customers, with plans to eventually charge a subscription fee for the new Alexa. At launch, Amazon will test the new Alexa with a small number of users and won’t charge for it.

  • Selling the collective: On Kevin Killian’s “Selected Amazon Reviews” – Cleveland Review of Books

    In 2021, writer Will Hall began scraping Kevin Killian’s reviews from Amazon’s servers and, thanks largely to his efforts, Semiotext(e) published Kevin Killian: Selected Amazon Reviews in November. The 697-page collection rescues from obscurity some of the over two thousand reviews the poet, playwright, novelist, biographer, editor, critic, and artist posted to the platform from 2003 until his death in 2019.

  • Alexa’s new AI brain is stuck in the lab – Bloomberg

    It’s true that Alexa is little more than a glorified kitchen timer for many people. It hasn’t become the money maker Amazon anticipated, despite the company once estimating that more than a quarter of US households own at least one Alexa-enabled device. But if Amazon can capitalize on that reach and convince even a fraction of its customers to pay for a souped-up AlexaGPT, the floundering unit could finally turn a profit and secure its future at an institutionally frugal company. If Amazon fails to meet the challenge, Alexa may go down as one of the biggest upsets in the history of consumer electronics, on par with Microsoft’s smartphone whiff.

  • Amazon’s Temu competitor Haul is an AI image wasteland – Modern Retail

    In Hensell’s view, the proliferation of these shoddy images is indicative of the type of seller Amazon has been recruiting for Haul. “A lot of these Chinese manufacturers, they’re built for volume,” she said. The fact that Amazon has so far allowed these listings to remain up, she went on, is a bad look for brands on Amazon’s dominant marketplace. “It degrades Amazon as a platform when you allow that kind of stuff to happen.”

  • Introducing Amazon Haul—a broad selection of products $20 or less, with most under $10 – Amazon

    Building on this longstanding partnership, we’re introducing an experience in the Amazon shopping app and mobile website called “Amazon Haul” that provides customers in the U.S. a place to discover even more affordable fashion, home, lifestyle, electronics, and other products with ultra-low prices and typical delivery times of one to two weeks. Amazon Haul offers a wide selection of products—all priced $20 and under—backed by Amazon’s A-to-z Guarantee, which protects customers when they buy in our store whether they are sold by Amazon or one of our selling partners.