Amazon’s retail chief Doug Herrington has been hosting an “AI show and tell” in his office for the past year in an attempt to stay up-to-date on artificial intelligence and the related projects the company is working on.
Herrington believes the current AI boom is more important than any of the past major technology shifts, like mobile or social, and warned employees that Amazon must stay ahead of the change if it wants to remain successful.
His comments came during last week’s internal all-hands meeting, a recording of the event was obtained by Business Insider. Herrington shared some of the new projects his team is working on while sounding the alarm on the importance of AI.
“I would say it’s important to remember that history is littered with big successful companies who faced big technology shifts,” Herrington said during the event. “They failed to adapt, and then they disappeared.”
The massive boom in AI, spearheaded by the sudden rise of ChatGPT, has pushed many companies, including Amazon, to more actively pursue the new technology. Internally, Amazon is scrambling to brainstorm new AI projects. Some of those ideas include a new AI-powered shopping agent and a major overhaul of the Alexa voice assistant, as BI previously reported.
Meanwhile, some employees have complained about the rushed launch of Amazon’s new Q chatbot and the growing pressure they feel in trying to incorporate AI into everything they do.
Amazon’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
‘AI show and tell’
During last week’s event, Herrington said the AI show and tell in his office has been taking place every few weeks over the past year. He said it started as a personal “learn and be curious mechanism,” where he invited any team across the retail business to come in and show what they were working on.
Now, a long list of people are waiting to showcase their projects. Herrington oversees Amazon’s entire retail business, including the online marketplace, healthcare unit, and logistics service.
Some of the recent projects he’s seen include a new feature that can automatically create product images for sellers and a new healthcare-trained model that could help support clinicians. There’s also a new AI model that can help warehouse robots look into a bucket full of products and pick out the right one they need, and another model that can help Amazon quickly identify bad actors in its marketplace, he said.
Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy shared a similar message during the all-hands meeting. He said “virtually every customer experience” is going to be reinvented by generative AI and stressed that “every single part” of Amazon is working on generative AI applications. Some of those new launches include a feature that summarizes customer reviews on Amazon and a new image creator for advertisers, he said.
Herrington added that the AI transformation taking place now is “really remarkable” and “much bigger” than any of the major transitions he’s seen in technology before. While mentioning big companies that failed to adapt to these transitions and ultimately phased out, Herrington said he’s confident Amazon is going to be a leader in AI.
“It’s all of our responsibility together to make sure that’s not going to be the Amazon story,” Herrington said. “Now the good news is I’m highly confident with our foresight and our culture of innovation that we’re not only going to manage through this transition, we’re going to be leaders in it.”
Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?
Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or email (ekim@businessinsider.com). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Business Insider’s source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.
Read the full article here
