Amazon

Amazon’s CTO built a meeting-summarizing app for some reason

How does Amazon CTO Werner Vogels — a man worth untold millions, who during the COVID-19 pandemic outright bought the small Central Amsterdam Airbnb he’d been living in — spend his days? From the looks of it: building AI-powered meeting-summarizing apps. Go figure. In a post this week on Vogels’ personal blog, he details Distill, […]

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Bedrock Studio is Amazon’s attempt to simplify generative AI app development

Amazon is launching a new tool, Bedrock Studio, designed to let organizations experiment with generative AI models, collaborate on those models, and ultimately build generative AI-powered apps. Available in public preview starting today, the web-based Bedrock Studio — a part of Bedrock, Amazon’s generative AI tooling and hosting platform — provides what Amazon describes in

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TechCrunch Minute: Audible deploys AI-narrated audiobooks. Can it replace the human touch?

AI is coming for audiobooks, and that is not an entirely bad thing. But it is a cause of concern in the realm of audio titles and the folks who make them today. Audible is making it easy for authors to generate AI-narrated audiobooks, and as in many cases of AI showing up in an

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Amazon launches a Prime-free marketplace in South Africa, its first in sub-Saharan Africa

Two years after announcing plans, Amazon’s highly awaited e-commerce entry into sub-Saharan Africa has finally come to pass. On Tuesday, the tech giant launched its marketplace in South Africa. South Africa is the e-commerce giant’s first marketplace in the sub-Saharan region (it already has an operation out of Egypt following the acquisition of Souq in

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Audible to test using Prime Video data for audiobook recommendations as Spotify competition heats up

Amazon has historically operated audiobook marketplace Audible as a separate entity, unconnected to the retailer’s broader goals and ambitions. Today, that’s changing a bit with the launch of a test that will allow Audible users to receive recommendations about what to listen to next based on their Prime Video viewing behavior. The company says this

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Amazon CodeWhisperer is now called Q Developer and is expanding its functions

Pour one out for CodeWhisperer, Amazon’s AI-powered assistive coding tool. As of today, it’s kaput — sort of. CodeWhisperer is now Q Developer, a part of Amazon’s Q family of business-oriented generative AI chatbots that also extends to the newly announced Q Business. Available through AWS, Q Developer helps with some of the tasks developers

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UK probes Amazon and Microsoft over AI partnerships with Mistral, Anthropic and Inflection

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching preliminary enquiries into whether the close-knit tie-ups and hiring practices involving Microsoft, Amazon and a trio of AI startups falls within the scope of its merger rules — and whether the arrangements could impact competition in the U.K. market. The announcement comes amid growing scrutiny of

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Amazon launches a new grocery delivery subscription in the US

Amazon said Tuesday that it has launched a new unlimited grocery delivery subscription for Prime members and customers with an EBT card (Electronic Benefit Transfer) in the U.S. if you’re living in one of the 3,500 eligible cities and towns. The company started testing grocery delivery in three locations last year: Denver; Sacramento, California; and

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Amazon ends California drone deliveries

Amazon confirmed it is ending Prime Air drone delivery operations in Lockeford, California. The Central California town of 3,500 was the company’s second U.S. drone delivery site, after College Station, Texas. Operations were announced in June 2022. The retail giant is not offering details around the setback, only noting, “We’ll offer all current employees opportunities

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