Amazon just launched Project Amelia, an AI business assistant built on AWS Bedrock to help sellers manage and grow their stores. Beta users in the U.S. can query sales metrics and customer traffic in plain English, with automated troubleshooting and task execution coming down the road.
Amazon just launched Enhance My Listing, a new generative AI tool powered by Amazon Bedrock that helps sellers automatically refresh and optimize existing product pages. It analyzes current shopping trends to suggest improved titles, bullet points, and missing details, letting merchants accept or decline changes with one click. It is currently rolling out to select U.S. sellers.
Intel just announced plans to spin off its AI-focused foundry business into an independent subsidiary with its own board, clearing the way for outside capital. The stock jumped over 6% following the news. Intel hopes this move and its upcoming 18A process will help turn around steep losses and mount a challenge to Nvidia.
Amazon just hired Covariant’s three co-founders and roughly a quarter of the startup's team, while licensing its robotics foundation models under a non-exclusive deal. Covariant builds foundational AI models designed to power warehouse robotic arms. Much like its Adept deal in June, Amazon is using creative hiring and licensing pacts to swallow frontier AI talent without triggering antitrust regulators.
Amazon is reportedly turning to Anthropic’s Claude to power its upcoming, smarter Alexa assistant after its in-house generative AI models struggled with basic prompt responses. The revamped assistant, dubbed "Remarkable Alexa," is expected to land around mid-October. Why it matters: Amazon previously poured $4 billion into Anthropic, and letting a rival's model take over its flagship consumer product proves that shipping a working agent beats maintaining corporate pride.
Amazon is reportedly prepping a major generative AI overhaul for Alexa this October, internally dubbed "Remarkable Alexa." The new assistant can craft custom recipes, write bedtime stories, and hold more human-like conversations, though it will reportedly require a paid subscription of up to $10 a month.
Audible just started testing Maven, an AI search assistant that helps listeners find titles using natural language requests like asking for an uplifting novel with a female lead. The feature is currently available to about half of its U.S. customers on iOS and Android. Audible is also testing AI-curated collections and review summaries.
Amazon just launched Titan Image Generator v2 on AWS Bedrock. The upgraded model adds reference-image guidance, background removal, color palette conditioning, and intelligent foreground segmentation to keep brand visuals consistent. AWS also maintains its copyright indemnification policy for enterprise users.
Amazon Music just rolled out Topics, an AWS-powered feature that uses AI to analyze podcast transcripts and descriptions to generate clickable subject tags. Tapping a tag lets listeners jump straight to other episodes across shows discussing the same subject. Why it matters: It turns hours of conversational audio into searchable, cross-show threads so you can follow ideas instead of just feeds.
Cohere just launched Rerank 3 Nimble, a new foundation model built for enterprise search and RAG workflows. It delivers roughly 3x faster performance than Rerank 3 while keeping high retrieval accuracy, but it is currently exclusive to Amazon SageMaker.
The Verge's Decoder podcast just dug into the uncomfortable reality of AI's massive power appetite. While tech giants like Microsoft and Google blow past their emissions targets to pack data centers with GPUs, high energy use is already standard across video streaming and gaming. The real debate is how we decide if AI is actually worth the juice.
Amazon is reportedly developing a new chatbot codenamed Metis, powered by its upcoming Olympus AI model rather than Titan. The tool leans on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to pull real-time data, with CEO Andy Jassy directly involved in the effort. Insiders say it could launch as early as September, though some within the company worry it may be too late to catch OpenAI and Google.
Anthropic just made tool use generally available across the entire Claude 3 model family via its API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Developers can now connect Claude to external APIs to extract structured data, automate multi-step workflows, and stream tool interactions. Why it matters: It gives Claude the hands and feet needed to act as a true agent, though parallel tool calls aren't supported yet.
Amazon is planning a major generative AI overhaul for Alexa later this year, and it won't be free. According to CNBC, the upgraded assistant will feature conversational capabilities powered by Amazon's Titan model, but will require a separate monthly subscription not included with Prime. Why it matters: Facing heat from OpenAI and Google, Amazon wants to turn hundreds of millions of smart speakers from expensive clock radios into a profitable AI subscription business.
World leaders and 16 frontier AI companies just signed landmark safety commitments at the AI Seoul Summit. Ten nations and the EU agreed to launch an international safety research network, while tech giants including OpenAI, Google, and China's Zhipu.ai pledged to halt the deployment of any model if risks breach predefined thresholds. Why it matters: It is the first time leading AI labs across the US, Europe, and China have formally aligned on explicit red lines.
Amazon's Audible has quietly added over 40,000 AI-narrated titles since launching its free virtual voice beta for self-published authors. While indie writers love turning ebooks into audiobooks in just 52 minutes, listeners are begging for a filter button, and voice actors warn their careers are actively being squeezed out.
Amazon just detailed the roadmap for its checkout-free tech, planning to more than double third-party Just Walk Out deployments in smaller stores while pushing smart Dash Carts in larger supermarkets. The company also pushed back on reports that Indian reviewers manually watched video feeds to tally bills, clarifying that computer vision models handle checkout automatically while humans only annotate training data. Why it matters: Amazon isn't giving up on cashierless retail—it's tailoring sensor fusion to quick-trip convenience and saving smart carts for big grocery hauls.
Amazon Music just rolled out Maestro, a new AI tool in beta that turns text prompts, voice notes, and even random emojis into custom playlists. Currently testing among select U.S. mobile users, Unlimited subscribers can stream tracks instantly, while free and Prime listeners are limited to 30-second previews. It's Amazon's direct answer to Spotify's recent AI push, designed to nudge more free users into paid tiers.
Amazon just got caught putting a human backbone into its flagship AI checkout tech. A report reveals its Just Walk Out system relied on roughly 1,000 workers in India reviewing about 700 of every 1,000 transactions in 2022. Amazon says the team mostly trains models, but it is already ditching the tech at Fresh stores for smart carts.
Amazon just completed its $4B commitment to Anthropic by injecting another $2.75B into the Claude maker. The deal requires Anthropic to rely on AWS and Amazon's custom chips, tightening the cloud giant's grip in the generative AI race against Microsoft and OpenAI.
