Dec. 1–5 recap: This week showed the global scramble to out‑build, out‑train, and out‑ship AI, from datacenter deals to AI-powered smart glasses.
The post Daily Tech Insider Highlights the Escalating AI Arms Race Across Cloud, Code, and Consumer Tech appeared first on TechRepublic.
Dec. 1–5 recap: This week showed the global scramble to out‑build, out‑train, and out‑ship AI, from datacenter deals to AI-powered smart glasses.
The post Daily Tech Insider Highlights the Escalating AI Arms Race Across Cloud, Code, and Consumer Tech appeared first on TechRepublic.
LAS VEGAS — Our toaster has arrived.
Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi service launched in Las Vegas this fall, and a few members of the hard-working GeekWire Studios crew joined me to try it out for a ride to dinner after a long day at AWS re:Invent. Zoox was nothing short of a hit with our group.
The consensus: it was a smooth, futuristic shuttle ride that felt safe amid the Las Vegas chaos, with per-seat climate control, and customizable music. (Somehow we landed on Cher, but in this vehicle, we felt no need to turn back time.) Most of all, the face-to-face seating made for a fun group experience, rather than a retrofitted car like Waymo.
Zoox, founded in 2014, was acquired by Amazon in 2020 for just over $1 billion, marking the tech giant’s move into autonomous vehicle technology and urban mobility. Zoox operates as an independent subsidiary, based in Foster City, Calif.
Unlike competitors that retrofit vehicles, Zoox designed its robotaxi from scratch. It’s a compact, 12-foot-long electric pod, bidirectional, without steering wheel or pedals.
The experience of calling the Zoox vehicle on the app was seamless and quick. The doors opened via a button in the app after the carriage arrived to pick us up at a designated station between Fashion Show Mall and Trump International Hotel.
Inside, our nighttime ride featured a starfield display on the interior ceiling of the cab, adding to the magical feel, with functional seats comfortable enough for a drive across the city.
A few of us had experienced Waymo in California, so it was natural to make the comparison. One thing I missed was the live virtual road view that Waymo provides, representing surrounding vehicles and roadways, which provides some reassurance.
Emergency human assistance also seemed more accessible in the Waymo vehicles than in the Zoox carriage. And unlike the Waymo Jaguar cars that I’ve taken in San Francisco, the build quality of the Zoox vehicle felt more utilitarian than luxury.
For this current phase of the Vegas rollout, one major downside is the limited service area — just seven fixed spots along the Las Vegas strip, like Resorts World, Luxor, and AREA15, requiring walks between hubs rather than seamless point-to-point hails. It’s more of a novelty for that reason, rather than a reliable form of transportation.
But hey, the rides are free for now, so it’s hard to complain.
And the ability to sit across from each other more than made up for any minor quibbles. (Our group of five split up and took two four-person carriages from Fashion Show Mall to Resorts World.) Compared to the Waymo experience, the Zoox vehicle feels less like sitting in a car and more like sharing a moving living room.
GeekWire Studios host Steph Stricklen was initially skeptical — wondering if Vegas would be the right place for an autonomous vehicle, given the chaotic backdrop and unpredictable traffic patterns on the Strip. But she walked away a believer, giving the ride a “10 out of 10” and saying she never felt unsafe as a passenger.
“It felt very Disneyland,” said GeekWire Studios host Brian Westbrook, citing the creature comforts such as climate control that seemed to be isolated to each seat. Along with music and other controls, that’s one of the features that can be accessed via small touch-screen displays for each passenger on the interior panel of the vehicle.
GeekWire project manager Jessica Reeves said she almost forgot that there wasn’t a human driving. Despite rapid acceleration at times, the ride was smooth.
“It didn’t feel like I was riding in an autonomous vehicle, maybe it was just the buzz of experiencing this new way of transportation,” Jessica messaged me afterward, reflecting on the experience. “The spaciousness, facing my friends, exploring the different features, it all happened so fast that before I knew it, we were there!”
Holly Grambihler, GeekWire’s chief sales and marketing officer, was impressed with the clean interior and comfortable seats.
“It felt less like a vehicle and more like a mobile karaoke studio with the customized climate control and ability to choose your music — Cher in Vegas, perfect!” Holly said. “It felt safe with our short ride. I don’t think I’d take a Zoox on a freeway yet.”
On that point: Zoox’s purpose-built pod is engineered to reach highway speeds of up to about 75 mph, and the company has tested it at those velocities on closed tracks. In Las Vegas, though, the robotaxis currently stick to surface streets at lower speeds, and Zoox hasn’t yet started mixing into freeway traffic.
The Vegas service launch marked Zoox’s first public robotaxi deployment, offering free rides along a fixed loop on and around the Strip while gathering data for paid trips. Zoox followed with a limited public launch in San Francisco in November.
For Amazon, the technology represents a long-term bet, with the potential to contribute to its logistics operations. It’s not hard to imagine similar vehicles shuttling packages in the future. But for now the focus is on public ridership.
The company has flagged Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Seattle as longer-term potential markets for the robotaxi service as regulations and technology mature. We’ve contacted Zoox for the latest update on its plans.
If our own ride this week was any indication, the company’s biggest challenge may simply be expanding the robotaxi service fast enough for more people to try it.
Editor’s note: GeekWire Studios is the content production arm of GeekWire, creating sponsored videos, podcasts, and other paid projects for a variety of companies and organizations, separate from GeekWire’s independent news coverage. GeekWire Studios had a booth at re:Invent, recording segments with Amazon partners in partnership with AWS. Learn more about GeekWire Studios.
The latest Alexa+ feature lets you jump to a scene without rewinding or forwarding on Prime Video. Describe the moment like “the train fight” or “the proposal in the rain,” and Alexa+ will instantly play that exact scene.
The post Alexa+ on Prime Video can drop you straight into that scene you love to rewatch appeared first on Digital Trends.
Amazon Prime Video has scaled back an experiment that created laughable anime dubs with generative AI.
In March, Amazon announced that its streaming service would start including “AI-aided dubbing on licensed movies and series that would not have been dubbed otherwise.” In late November, some AI-generated English and Spanish dubs of anime popped up, including dubs for the Banana Fish series and the movie No Game No Life: Zero. The dubs appear to be part of a beta launch, and users have been able to select “English (AI beta)” or “Spanish (AI beta)” as an audio language option in supported titles.
Not everyone likes dubbed content. Some people insist on watching movies and shows in their original language to experience the media more authentically, with the passion and talent of the original actors. But you don’t need to be against dubs to see what’s wrong with the ones Prime Video tested.
© Amazon
Amazon’s new “Amazon Now” ultra-fast delivery for household essentials and fresh groceries passed the speed test on Tuesday.
During a trial of the newly launched service, it took 23 minutes from the click of the order button on the Amazon shopping app to the drop of the items at my house. That time easily meets Amazon’s promise of 30-minutes-or-less delivery.
Amazon Now is rolling out to eligible neighborhoods in Seattle and Philadelphia. Customers using the Amazon app or website can browse a curated selection of fresh produce, meat and seafood, pantry staples, frozen foods, beverages, household supplies and more.
Customers are able to track their order status and tip their driver within the Amazon Now feature. Prime members pay discounted delivery fees starting at $3.99 per order, compared with $13.99 for non-Prime customers, with a $1.99 “small basket” fee on orders under $15.
GeekWire reported last week that Amazon was building out a new rapid-delivery hub at a former Amazon Fresh Pickup site in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. (That site did not fulfill the order I placed on Tuesday.) Amazon this week revealed more details about Amazon Now.
Permit filings detail how employees pick and bag items in a back-of-house stockroom, stage completed orders on front-of-house shelves, and hand them off to Amazon Flex drivers, who are expected to arrive, scan, confirm, and leave with a package within roughly two minutes. The operation is slated to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, “much like a convenience store,” according to the filings.
Keep reading for details on how the process works.
My wife prefers to do all the shopping for our household and she does so at several different stores including Trader Joe’s, Fred Meyer, Town & Country, and Costco. Our neighborhood, Ballard, isn’t exactly a food desert, and prior to conducting my Amazon Now test, I passed a Safeway en route to stops at Walgreens and Metropolitan Market within a few blocks of my house.
But for the sake of speed and convenience and this test, I browsed the Amazon Now selection looking for a few items we could use. I chose a Red Baron frozen pizza ($4.37); 365 by Whole Foods Market multigrain bread ($2.85); a 4-pack of Duracell AA batteries ($5.47); Saltine crackers ($4.05); Sabra classic hummus ($3.95); and a 6-ounce pack of blackberries ($2.17).
The six items totaled $22.86, plus the $3.99 delivery fee, 64 cents in tax, and a $3 tip for the driver — $30.49 total.
There’s either a reason why my wife does all the shopping or groceries really are very expensive these days, because $30 feels like a lot for six items. Although, $7 of that does include delivery fee and tip — the price of on-demand convenience!
I placed the order at 12:38 p.m. and the Amazon app and a confirmation email both immediately estimated that delivery time would be 1:05 p.m.
A status bar in the app showed where my items would be in the chain of events: ordered, packed, out for delivery, and delivered.
Within just a few minutes the status changed from ordered to out for delivery, and I watched as a small Amazon vehicle icon made its way west across Seattle toward my house. The delivery estimate time dropped a couple minutes to 1:02 p.m.
When a white van showed up in front of my house in less than 10 minutes I was sure this story was going to go in a different direction about just how speedy Amazon Now is. But my neighbor was getting a bunch of stuff delivered from IKEA — no one shops in stores anymore, I guess.
For what it’s worth, transportation software company INRIX released its annual Global Traffic Scorecard this week, with details on how much time people lose sitting in traffic. INRIX says Seattle congestion is climbing again, especially in last-mile corridors that delivery fleets rely on.
“The [Amazon Now service] may end up distributing demand more evenly across the transportation network, rather than concentrating congestion via larger hubs,” Bob Pishue, transportation analyst at INRIX, told GeekWire.
I watched via the app as the Amazon vehicle icon neared my house and I stepped onto my front porch at 1 p.m. to see my driver arrive. Wearing his blue Amazon vest, the driver placed a brown paper Amazon Now bag in my hand for what amounted to a 23-minute process from start to finish.
The driver said he made his pickup from an Amazon Now-specific facility that is located near a Whole Foods location at Roosevelt Way NE and NE 64th Street — roughly 3.5 miles or 15 minutes from my house.
The driver had not heard anything about the planned Amazon Now delivery hub just down the road from my house in Ballard, at 5100 15th Ave. NW.
The six items I ordered were packed as neatly as you’d expect, even if the loaf of bread did get a little smooshed.
The frozen pizza was still cold, and so was the hummus. The blackberries looked like any random, small pack of blackberries I might find in the fridge and finish off in one sitting.
The batteries were really the only thing I needed at the moment, and I’d have preferred to be able to buy a more economical pack of 12 or 20, but a four pack was the only option. Maybe four batteries is all anyone needs from their fast-delivery convenience store.
I’m old school-ish. I like going to the grocery store. I like seeing people, browsing aisles, and talking to the cashier (if they haven’t all been replaced by self-checkout). We’re not in Covid times. No part of me really needs or wants a bag of six random grocery items quickly delivered to my front porch in the name of convenience.
I’m clearly not the target audience for Amazon Now. My 18-year-old watched me as I stood at the window waiting for the driver and asked, “What is it, like DoorDash?”
“I guess so,” I said.
But if I was sick on my couch and wanted soup, Saltines and a ginger ale in 30 minutes or less, and didn’t want to move to go get it, I might use the service again.
Or if I’d already been to the store that day and forgot some items that were needed for dinner, I could see biting the bullet. Especially if the drive back to the grocery store was not so quick.
While at Met Market earlier that morning, I watched a woman in self-checkout pull at her receipt and the whole roll of tape fell out of the machine and rolled across the floor unspooling.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it!” said the human employee monitoring self-checkers. “I need to show I’m essential.”
Amazon has agreed to pay more than $3.7 million to settle claims with the City of Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards (OLS) over allegations that it violated ordinances protecting gig and app-based workers during the pandemic.
OLS said in a news release Wednesday that Amazon only provided premium pay and paid sick and safe time (PSST) to workers when they performed deliveries for Amazon Flex’s food or grocery business lines — but not to workers who performed package deliveries from Amazon’s warehouses.
Amazon Flex uses independent contractors that drive their own vehicles to deliver items for Amazon business lines.
Amazon denied the allegations, but will pay $3,777,924.10, consisting of settlement payments and credits to 10,968 affected workers and $20,000 in fines to the City of Seattle.
The alleged violations cover three city ordinances: Gig Worker Premium Pay, Gig Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time, and App-Based Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time.
OLS alleged that in violation of the Gig Worker Premium Pay ordinance, between Aug. 27, 2021, and Oct. 31, 2022, Amazon failed to provide premium pay to Amazon Flex gig workers for deliveries with a pick-up and/or drop-off in Seattle that were not for its food/grocery business lines.
OLS further alleged violations of the Gig Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time and the App-Based Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time ordinances between Jan. 31, 2021, and Jan. 12, 2024. The agency said Amazon Flex failed to establish an accessible system for gig workers to request and use PSST for workers that were not delivering for its food/grocery business lines, and it failed to provide correct monthly PSST notification to workers that were not delivering food/grocery.
“Gig workers served on the frontlines throughout the pandemic, providing critical services like grocery and food delivery to our vulnerable neighbors and elders,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement. “These workers remain a valued part of our workforce today and deserve fair pay and protections.”
The Gig Worker Premium Pay and Gig Worker PSST ordinances were temporary ordinances enacted during the pandemic to allow gig workers access to extra pay and sick leave benefits. With the lifting of the mayor’s emergency order on Oct. 31, 2022, the two ordinances are no longer in effect.
The settlement with Amazon Flex is the second largest in OLS history, according to OLS Director Steven Marchese.
In August, Uber Eats agreed to pay $15 million to more than 16,000 delivery workers in Seattle over allegations that the tech giant violated laws regulating how workers are paid. A majority of that settlement was related to the city’s Independent Contractor Protections (ICP) Ordinance, which passed in 2021 and aims to ensure pay transparency.
Affected Amazon Flex workers can expect settlement payments starting around Jan. 1, according to OLS.
Update: Amazon provided the following statement to GeekWire on Wednesday:
“The Puget Sound region is our home, and we’re proud to serve customers here while supporting the community through good job opportunities, support for local small businesses and organizations, and hundreds of millions in local investments. We’ve always complied with Seattle laws relating to providing paid sick and safe time to delivery partners — including when the City Council enacted emergency measures during the pandemic for food delivery app-based workers, and following the 2024 expansion of the rule to include all app-based workers. While we strongly disagree with OLS on the facts of this matter, we’re pleased to put it behind us and remain focused on continuing to improve the experience for our customers and the drivers who deliver to them.”
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are creating exact replicas of popular web platforms to train AI agents to navigate the digital world like humans.
The post Tech Giants Build Fake Amazon and Gmail to Train AI Agents appeared first on TechRepublic.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are creating exact replicas of popular web platforms to train AI agents to navigate the digital world like humans.
The post Tech Giants Build Fake Amazon and Gmail to Train AI Agents appeared first on TechRepublic.
AWS is empowering partners with new AI categories, increased support, and marketplace innovations — all showcased at AWS re:Invent 2025.
The post AWS re:Invent Highlights New Agentic AI Partners and AI-Driven Marketplace Evolution appeared first on TechRepublic.
AWS is empowering partners with new AI categories, increased support, and marketplace innovations — all showcased at AWS re:Invent 2025.
The post AWS re:Invent Highlights New Agentic AI Partners and AI-Driven Marketplace Evolution appeared first on TechRepublic.
LAS VEGAS — After spending nearly two hours trying to impress the crowd with new LLMs, advanced AI chips, and autonomous agents, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman showed that the quickest way to a developer’s heart isn’t a neural network. It’s a discount.
One of the loudest cheers at the AWS re:Invent keynote Tuesday was for Database Savings Plans, a mundane but much-needed update that promises to cut bills by up to 35% across database services like Aurora, RDS, and DynamoDB in exchange for a one-year commitment.
The reaction illustrated a familiar tension for cloud customers: Even as tech giants introduce increasingly sophisticated AI tools, many companies and developers are still wrestling with the basic challenge of managing costs for core services.
The new savings plans address the issue by offering flexibility that didn’t exist before, letting developers switch database engines or move regions without losing their discount.
“AWS Database Savings Plans: Six Years of Complaining Finally Pays Off,” is the headline from the charmingly sardonic and reliably snarky Corey Quinn of Last Week in AWS, who specializes in reducing AWS bills as the chief cloud economist at Duckbill.
Quinn called the new “better than it has any right to be” because it covers a wider range of services than expected, but he pointed out several key drawbacks: the plans are limited to one-year terms (meaning you can’t lock in bigger savings for three years), they exclude older instance generations, and they do not apply to storage or backup costs.
He also cited the lack of EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) coverage, calling the inability to move spending between computing and databases a missed opportunity for flexibility.
But the database pricing wasn’t the only basic upgrade to get a big reaction. For example, the crowd also cheered loudly for Lambda durable functions, a feature that lets serverless code pause and wait for long-running background tasks without failing.
Garman made these announcements as part of a new re:Invent gimmick: a 10-minute sprint through 25 non-AI product launches, complete with an on-stage shot clock. The bit was a nod to the breadth of AWS, and to the fact that not everyone in the audience came for AI news.
He announced the Database Savings Plans in the final seconds, as the clock ticked down to zero. And based on the way he set it up, Garman knew it was going to be a hit — describing it as “one last thing that I think all of you are going to love.”
Judging by the cheers, at least, he was right.
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