Amazon lays of hundreds of employees in Alexa division

Amazon, on Friday, announced that it is laying off hundreds of employees in the Alexa voice assistant unit in what the company is calling an attempt to "better align with its business priorities."

According to a Reuters report, Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV, said in the e-mail, "We are shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers- which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI. These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives."

While most of the jobs affected were in the devices division, a few who have been laid off were working on Alexa-related products in a different unit, a spokeswoman said, reported Reuters.

“We’re really encouraged by the progress we’re making with Alexa: customers are interacting with Alexa tens of millions of times every hour and there are more than half a billion Alexa devices in customers’ homes. Our investments in generative AI are also bringing our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before. As we continue to invent, we’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers—which includes maximizing our resources and efforts focused on generative AI. These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated,” the mail to the employees read, according to media reports.

"We will communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week, and are following local processes in other regions, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies, and possibly resulting in longer timelines to communicate," the letter read.

To those of you impacted by these reductions, please know we did not make this decision lightly, he added, calling it a "hard decision."