Amazon Prime Video is about to intensify its advertising strategy, introducing new formats that could be more intrusive for users. Just over three months ago, the platform started showing ads in series and movies, but now it plans to include them also in key moments such as breaks during content playback.
According to Amazon, as detailed in a blog post, the new formats include “shopping carousels” that will appear during commercial breaks, showing products that viewers could purchase on Amazon. These “ads within ads” will automatically pause if interacted with, allowing users to explore the products in more detail.
In addition, there will be interactive ads during TV shows, movies, and live sports events, offering brand trivia that could provide rewards such as Amazon purchase credits. Ads with translucent overlays will also be introduced during breaks, allowing viewers to add promoted products directly to their shopping carts.
Although Amazon offers an ad-free option for a small additional fee (1.99 euros per month), most users are still subscribed only to Prime, the current “plan with advertising”. The company has not disclosed the exact number of Prime Video subscribers, but it has confirmed that it has 200 million Prime subscribers worldwide.
Amazon has responded to accusations that its Just Walk Out technology, which eliminates traditional cashiers, is managed by humans in India instead of artificial intelligence. The e-commerce giant dismisses these claims as “false,” stating that its system is based on a machine learning model with human support.
At the beginning of the month, The Information published an article claiming that Amazon employed around 1,000 workers in India to oversee customer purchases and review transactions in stores using the Just Walk Out technology. According to the article, these workers had to review approximately 70% of the transactions.
Amazon now acknowledges in a blog post that humans are involved in the process, although it claims that their role is limited to recording data from real and AI-generated purchases to improve the Just Walk Out system, not to fully execute it. The company compares this practice to other AI systems that also require human intervention to ensure greater accuracy.
However, Amazon also confirms in its publication that it is indeed removing the Just Walk Out technology from its stores, as customers prefer to use the Dash Cart system, which automatically counts the items in the cart as they are placed. The company has started expanding the Dash Cart to third-party grocery stores and all Amazon Fresh stores.
However, Amazon argues that Just Walk Out is still suitable for stores with a limited selection of products and where customers only need to buy a few items. The company plans to launch “more third-party Just Walk Out stores of small format in 2024 than any previous year”, although it does not rule out bringing the technology to larger stores.
In addition, Amazon says it is working on improving the latency and accuracy of the system to obtain faster and more reliable receipts, as well as developing new algorithms and sensors.
Amazon has launched this week a virtual shopping assistant based on artificial intelligence trained with its product catalog, user questions and answers, ratings, as well as information from the entire web. This tool, named Rufus, has been launched in beta phase among a selection of US customers, and will be available to more users in the coming weeks.
According to a company publication, customers will be able to chat with Rufus within the Amazon mobile app to get help in searching for products, compare products, and get recommendations on what to buy. The chatbot will not include advertising at its launch, although it will be gradually added in the coming months.
As an example, Amazon suggests that a customer who wants to buy running shoes could ask Rufus questions like “What should I consider when buying running shoes?”. “What are the differences between trail shoes and road shoes?” or “Are they durable?”.
“It is still early for generative AI, and the technology will not always get it right,” says Amazon in their publication. “We will continue to improve our AI models and adjust the responses so that Rufus becomes more and more useful. We encourage customers to send us their feedback by rating their responses with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and they also have the option to do so freely.”
Amazon announced this week that it is abandoning its plans to acquire iRobot, the manufacturer of the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba, after regulators expressed concerns about the potential harm to competition. The e-commerce giant will have to pay iRobot a contract termination fee of 94 million dollars.
The announcement is another sign of the major adjustments that Amazon and other technology companies around the world are making as a result of the tightening of regulations and controls worldwide (especially in the European Union), to the point of completely changing their business practices, products, and policies.
Amazon states in its statement that “disproportionate regulatory obstacles” caused it to step away from the agreement, announced in 2022. IRobot products, which also include robotic mops and air purifiers, were going to join a growing list of home automation products from Amazon, such as the Ring home security systems and Echo smart speakers.
The company said that, instead of restricting competition, the agreement would have given iRobot more resources to compete with other robotics companies. “This outcome will deny consumers faster innovation and more competitive prices, which we are confident would have made their lives easier and more enjoyable,” said David Zapolsky, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Amazon, in the statement.
Amazon Q AI, the latest innovation from AWS, has been unveiled by AWS CEO Adam Selipsky at AWS re:Invent. This revolutionary chat tool empowers businesses to seek tailored answers to their specific queries. Serving as an AI assistant, Amazon Q AI allows users to tap into their data for insights.
For instance, employees can leverage Amazon Q AI to inquire about the latest brand logo guidelines or decipher a fellow engineer’s code for app maintenance. Instead of laboriously sifting through numerous documents, Q AI efficiently surfaces the required information.
Accessing Amazon Q AI is a breeze, as users can utilize it via the AWS Management Console, their company’s documentation pages, developer environments such as Slack, and various third-party applications. Selipsky made it clear that the questions posed on Amazon Q AI “will not be used to train any foundation models.”
Amazon Q AI seamlessly integrates with any of the models available on Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s repository of AI models, which encompasses Meta’s Llama 2 and Anthropic’s Claude 2, among others. Customers who frequently utilize Q AI have the flexibility to select the model that aligns best with their needs. They can establish a connection to the Bedrock API for the chosen model, utilize it to gain insights into their data, policies, and workflow, and subsequently deploy Amazon Q AI.
AWS has underlined that Amazon Q AI draws upon 17 years’ worth of AWS knowledge, making it a valuable resource for addressing AWS-specific queries. It excels in recommending the optimal AWS services for various projects.
Presently, Amazon Q AI is exclusively accessible to Amazon Connect users, AWS’s service tailored for contact centers. However, the company has plans to extend its availability to other services, such as Amazon Supply Chain, designed to facilitate supply chain management tracking, and Amazon QuickSight, a platform dedicated to business intelligence. Notably, Amazon Q AI for supply chain and business intelligence is currently available in preview.
In an interview with The Verge, Dilip Kumar, Vice President for AWS Applications, explained that each instance of Amazon Q AI on AWS services will exhibit unique characteristics. For instance, on Amazon Connect, Q AI operates in real-time and actively listens to customer calls, extracting essential information like account details. It then provides contact center agents with pertinent answers to inquiries, eliminating the need for agents to search for information themselves.
“We wanted to pair the technology with the services that make the most sense first, and for contact centers, supply chain, and business intelligence, AI is a natural fit,” Kumar stated.
Amazon Q AI offers a compelling solution for businesses seeking efficient and tailored responses to their queries. AWS CEO Adam Selipsky’s announcement at AWS re:Invent has shed light on the promising capabilities of Amazon Q AI. This chat tool, which integrates seamlessly with models on Amazon Bedrock, empowers users to harness the power of AI to gain insights into their data, policies, and workflows. It represents a significant leap forward in the quest for streamlined information retrieval, sparing employees from the arduous task of manual document searching.
Amazon Q AI’s deep knowledge, drawn from 17 years of AWS expertise, positions it as a valuable resource for addressing AWS-specific inquiries and recommending optimal AWS services. While currently exclusive to Amazon Connect, AWS’s contact center service, it is slated for expansion to other services like Amazon Supply Chain and Amazon QuickSight.
In terms of pricing, Amazon Q AI in Connect is competitively priced at a starting rate of $40 per agent per month, and users have the opportunity to try it “for no charge until March 1, 2024,” according to AWS’s Connect website. Selipsky has emphasized that Amazon Q AI prioritizes security, respecting the parameters set by customers to ensure that unauthorized personnel cannot access sensitive information.
It’s worth noting that other companies have also ventured into similar territory with products like Microsoft’s Copilot, Dropbox’s Dash, and Notion’s AI-powered notes search feature.
As an additional announcement, AWS will offer Bedrock users the capability to implement guardrails around the models they use to build AI-powered applications. Currently in preview, these guardrails enable companies to enforce data privacy and responsible AI standards, a critical consideration for highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare. Furthermore, AWS plans to include the ability to redact personally identifiable information from customers’ end users as part of these guardrails, although this feature is not immediately available.
The CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy, has made it clear what his opinion is regarding the lack of desire of his workers to return to the office.
Amazon once again makes it clear that it’s not interested in the personal well-being of its workers. The company’s CEO, Andy Jassy, wants remote employees to return to the offices, even going so far as to “hint” that if they don’t want to do so, they can leave the company.
In mid-February, Amazon decided to change its telecommuting policy, which had been established during the COVID times and gave teams complete freedom to go to the office or not. The new policy required workers to start coming to the office for a minimum of three days each week starting from May 1st, a change that did not sit well with employees.
Amazon employees, who disagreed with the change, signed a petition to continue working from home and even organized a strike to achieve this. Several months later, Amazon continues to show how little it cares about its employees’ opinions.
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon
According to Business Insider, which had access to a recording of a meeting where Jassy was present, the CEO of Amazon told his employees, “The time for disagreeing and committing has passed.”
He concluded the statement by saying, “If you can’t disagree and commit… it’s probably not going to work for you at Amazon because we’re going to be back in the office at least three days a week.”
Jassy characterizes the new policy as a “thoughtful decision” and encourages those who don’t want to comply to leave Amazon. “It’s not okay for all of our teammates to be working three days a week and have people not willing to do that,” the CEO stated.
After laying off 10,000 employees at the end of last year, Amazon carried out a new round of workforce reduction in March, involving 9,000 employees, even affecting Twitch, the popular streaming platform.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
As you said in your newsletter, I would rather see your books pirated than this.
Imagine you are a successful writer: What’s the worst nightmare you can think of? If you said “being plagiarized,” it’s because you still need to catch up with the 21st century. Jane Friedman, author of books about writing like ‘The Business of Being a Writer’ or ‘How to Publish Your Book,’ woke up one day to discover that six new manuscripts of hers had been published… by an Artificial Intelligence.
It happened on Amazon, when overnight, half a dozen manuscripts signed by Jane Friedman appeared in which she hadn’t touched a single word. Neither she nor anyone else, except for a robot. As she mentioned in her newsletter, she would prefer to see her books pirated than this.
‘A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Good Books, Building an Exciting Author Platform, and Maximizing Success,’ ‘How to Write and Publish an eBook Quickly and Make Money,’ or ‘Great Ideas: Your Guide to Writing a Bestselling eBook on Amazon’ are some of these books. It’s ironic that an artificial intelligence wants to give you guides on writing and publishing bestsellers or, even worse, provide you with good ideas so you don’t run dry.
As she tells it, she could have let them sink without reviews, but that would set a precedent after all: if you can mimic someone else’s writing style, create a book in seconds, and put it up for sale, where does real authorship stand? Seeing that these artificial monsters were being added to her Goodreads page, the author decided to take matters into her own hands and nip it in the bud.
But she’s not alone: there are authors who, in just a week, have 29 new titles that aren’t theirs. Of course, they’re not Stephen King or Danielle Steel, but rather those with a small niche who are trying to take advantage. In the end, they end up spending more time asking Amazon and Goodreads to remove their products than, well, actually working.
We might think that there’s no solution to this plague, let the AI reign over all of us, and shrug in disapproval, but it’s actually much easier than it seems: Amazon and Goodreads just need to create a way to verify authorship to easily block fraudulent books. Since this is an anecdote today and will be a reality tomorrow, they better get their act together… Or announce the ultimate victory of the machines and Skynet. Hey, who knows, maybe Jane Friedman is our Sarah Connor.
Christmas is only a few days away, and in the “home stretch,” there is generally a lot of rushing around and last-minute shopping. It never fails: every year, we promise ourselves that this won’t happen again and that we’ll buy everyone’s Christmas presents in advance. But every year, we keep procrastinating (“I’ll get around to it, I have all the time in the world”), and suddenly that Christmas Eve dinner with our family is only a few hours away.
If you’re reading this article, it’s because you, like most of us, need a little help finishing your Christmas shopping by December 25. Fortunately, in today’s article we have a roundup of the best online stores where you can buy all kinds of tech-related gifts… and have them delivered to your door in the nick of time! We hope you find it helpful.
Amazon
At the top of our list is Amazon, the famous online macro store founded by Jeff Bezos. It’s a place where you can find literally anything imaginable, from the latest iPhone to more outlandish items like a resistance parachute for running. In fact, if you can’t find it on Amazon, it probably doesn’t exist. This is why it’s great if you need to quickly find a specific gift, or, on the contrary, browse multiple products without having to visit different websites.
One of Amazon’s great advantages is its ultra-fast delivery system. In fact, if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you can have any product delivered in 24 hours without paying for shipping. But that’s not all, depending on the city where you live or the time you place your order, you may be able to receive your gift on the same day. For these reasons, Amazon has unbeatable service compared to similar online stores.
Another interesting point about Amazon: if you’re out of time and need same-day delivery, you can use its Prime Now service. It lets you purchase certain Amazon products and receive them at home in just two hours. While Prime Now is mostly for items you could find in a supermarket, it also has toys, video games, memory cards and a wide variety of electronics. The only requirement is that you have to be an Amazon Prime customer.
One last tip: if you’re in a real pinch and can’t wait 24 hours for your gift to arrive, Amazon sells eGift cards that you can give your family and friends so they can buy whatever they want. That way you’ll be killing two birds with one stone: your gift will arrive in time for Christmas and you’ll be getting the person something they like.
As you can see, shopping on Amazon has lots of advantages, and the biggest ones are its wide selection of items and guaranteed on-time delivery of everything you buy. You can check out the Amazon catalog hereor download the mobile app below.
GAME is the perfect website if you’re looking for a good online store specialized in video games with a nice selection of electronics. This multinational has been around for a number of years and is known for its excellent service and many advantages for members.
The GAME catalog contains the top video games in the market, and you can even reserve upcoming releases. One of the biggest advantages of shopping on this website is that, aside from being able to buy new games, you can snag older, harder-to-find titles thanks to its selection of pre-owned games. Also, if you’re a GAME member, you’ll earn points for every purchase that can later be redeemed for discounts on the site.
As for delivery times on GAME, orders are generally delivered in 24 hours if the item is in stock. Depending on the city where you live, GAME even offers same-day delivery, so you would definitely receive your presents in time for Christmas.
If you’re really tight on time, GAME sells digital gift cards that can be used in the store or for online services like PlayStation Network, Xbox Live/Game Pass or Nintendo eShop. Best of all, it’s immediate, so you don’t have to wait for a package to be sent and delivered to your home.
You can browse the GAME catalog by clicking on this link, or by using the mobile app, which you can download below.
MediaMarkt is a popular online store that tech fans adore. It sells all kinds of products, from TVs, phones, laptops and tablets to video game consoles, appliances and even scooters to ride around the city. The discounts are generous, so for many, it’s the perfect site to buy a nice gift while saving a little money.
As for delivery times, MediaMarkt promises to deliver your order to your door within a maximum of 24 to 48 hours. That’s perfectly fine in normal conditions, but if you’re in a rush, keep in mind that you’ll need to place your order at least a couple of days before Christmas.
You can check out the MediaMarkt catalog by using the mobile app, which you can download quickly and conveniently below.
If you’re crazy about computers and are looking for a store that designs and sells the best products for your PC, be sure to check out PcComponentes. With years of experience in the sector, this website has a huge catalog that you can use to design and build your perfect computer part by part. But that’s not all: if you’re in the market for a laptop but don’t know which one to buy, the store has a useful tool to help you select the best one for you.
Along with a superb catalog centered on the world of computers, PcComponentes sells all kinds of cell phones, gadgets and appliances that you can buy to surprise your loved ones. And if you don’t want to spend a lot of money, there’s a selection of outlet and refurbished products to fit any budget. But that’s not all: if you’re still not sure what gift to buy, have a look at the special Christmas section with hundreds of ideas to help you.
Regarding the shipment and delivery, you’ll receive your order from PcComponentes within 24 hours. That’s why it’s a great option to buy the perfect gift in time for Christmas. You can visit the official PcComponentes website here.
Xtralife
If you like video games but don’t find what you’re looking for on GAME, we suggest visiting Xtralife. Designed for gamers who use both PCs and consoles, this online store has an extraordinary catalog of the newest games along with more vintage titles. The site also sells lots of video game merch, including figurines, stuffed animals, nendoroids and all kinds of items that will thrill any collector.
One of the best things about Xtralife is that it sells games for a truly competitive price, and each order includes a little gift from the store’s team. In addition, if you reserve a title on Xtralife, you are guaranteed delivery on launch day or a bit earlier, as soon as the store has the item in stock.
Like other online stores, Xtralife also sells gift cards for online services for consoles (PSN, Xbox Live / Game Pass / Nintendo eShop, etc.) as well as PC (Steam, Origin, etc.) and streaming services (Netflix, Movistar +, Spotify, HBO Spain, etc.). That way you’ll be sure to receive your gift immediately and have it all ready for Christmas.
Regarding shipping, any item purchased on Xtralife before 6:00 p.m. will be shipped the same day and received within 24 hours. And in fact, if you live in Barcelona, same-day delivery is available, so your Christmas purchases will be sure to arrive on time. You can visit the official Xtralife site here.
Online video game stores
Finally, if you’re in a hurry to buy gifts, you can always purchase a digital game through one of the top platforms out there (Steam, GoG, Origin, etc.) With tons of Christmas discounts, they’re a quick and affordable way to get a gift for someone on your list. To do that, simply buy the video game of your choice and mark it as a gift.
The top digital gaming platform on the market is Steam, but it’s not the only one worth visiting. Below is a detailed article on the most popular online gaming stores around.
We hope our roundup of online stores for last-minute Christmas shopping has been helpful to you. Is there any other store you’d like to recommend to our readers? Tell us about it in the comments section!
