Amazon
Source reports covering Amazon. Stories will appear when analysis and community reactions are ready.
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While Amazon blocks AI agents, Walmart rolls out the welcome mat
news
3 min read
Walmart announced an Agent Gateway that lets approved AI agents search its online inventory and make purchases for customers through the Model Context Protocol, or MCP. The system will support shopping at Walmart and Sam’s Club, CEO John Furner said at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. MCP, created by Anthropic, connects AI agents to external data sources, tools and workflows. Walmart said its gateway can help customers buy usual brands or items without directly sharing personal information or purchase histories with an agent. Agent Profiles, scheduled to roll out next month, will let Walmart account holders authorize each AI agent through a separate profile, view agent-initiated purchases separately, and set approval rules. Customers can require approval for every transaction or permit purchases up to a spending limit, and they can delete profiles at any time. The service will not require a Walmart+ membership. Walmart is also establishing terms that limit agents to shopper-authorized actions, bar access to payment information, and restrict access to information needed for a task. Noncompliant agents will be blocked. Walmart said its normal returns process applies when an agent makes an unintended purchase. The rollout follows Amazon’s move to block AI agents from buying goods for online shoppers, while Walmart already supports integrations with apps including ChatGPT and Gemini.
It is a sign of the times that Amazon gets to call this fair use
opinion
2 min read
Amazon has reportedly bought large quantities of printed books, including rare and foreign-language titles, for scanning into AI training data. A 404 Media investigation tracked a rare book with a tracking device to Amazon’s VGT3 warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Employees at the site reportedly said shipments of books are received there, their bindings are cut off to speed scanning, and the physical copies are destroyed. A bookseller involved in the tracked shipment said rare books can carry historical, intellectual, sentimental, and monetary value beyond their text. The Internet Archive, founded by Brewster Kahle in 1996, digitizes books while retaining their physical bindings. Its scanning centers use operators known as scribe operators to capture books one page at a time. The organization says it does not destroy books by cutting off their bindings and instead adapts machines and software for nondestructive digitization. The Internet Archive contrasts its process with Google Books, launched in 2004, which it says used industrial-scale destructive scanning to increase processing speed.
AirTag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI
news
1 min read
A rare book containing a hidden AirTag was tracked to Amazon’s VGT3 warehouse in Las Vegas, where 404 Media reported that a team tore books from their spines and scanned their pages. The book was supplied by a bookseller as part of a bulk order after booksellers had spent roughly a year suspecting that AI companies were acquiring large quantities of rare books and destroying them after digitization. 404 Media connected the tracked book to an Amazon AI training facility, providing evidence tying Amazon to at least one such bulk purchase. Amazon did not comment directly on the findings or say whether the scanned books were used for AI training. The company said it buys books through commercial channels “to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use.” Amazon is developing frontier AI models, which require large volumes of distinct training data to compete with companies including Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Text from rare books could offer valuable training material because the works may be difficult to obtain elsewhere. Anthropic and xAI have publicly said they do not train their models on rare or antique books. A logo documented on the VGT3 team’s warehouse door depicted a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book.
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
news
1 min read
Amazon is acquiring large quantities of rare books, scanning them for AI training data, and subsequently destroying them. An investigation tracked a rare book to an Amazon AI training facility, revealing the company's book buying operation.
Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center
news
5 min read
Amazon has begun construction on a massive AI data center in Gilroy, California, using a 45-year-old legal provision to bypass community voting. Local residents were not given an opportunity to comment on the project before its initiation.
New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
news
4 min read
Amazon is investing in a natural-gas-burning power plant in Texas, which could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States. This investment is part of a larger data center project, despite the company's commitments to climate initiatives.
Amazon investigating engineers who criticized AI data center expansion
news
3 min read
Amazon is investigating engineers who publicly criticized the rapid expansion of AI data centers and called for stronger government regulation. Five employees testified at Seattle City Council meetings regarding a year-long moratorium on new large-scale data center construction.
Amazon CEO's Talks with U.S. Officials Triggered Crackdown on Anthropic Models
news
2 min read
The Trump administration halted all foreign use of Anthropic's AI models following discussions between Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and U.S. officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Researchers at Amazon used prompts to extract information from Anthropic's Fable 5 model that could potentially aid cyberattacks.
'Sloppenheimer:' Amazon employees mock the company's AI on Slack
news
1 min read
Amazon employees are mocking the company's AI tools on Slack, referring to the output as "slop." Despite Jeff Bezos' belief in AI's potential to drive productivity gains, employees joke about the ineffective motivation to use these tools.
Amazon wins court order to block Perplexity's AI shopping agent
news
2 min read
A federal judge granted Amazon a temporary order blocking Perplexity's Comet AI browser from accessing its site. Amazon's lawsuit claims Perplexity concealed its AI agents to scrape the website without permission.
After outages, Amazon to make senior engineers sign off on AI-assisted changes
news
1 min read
Amazon's ecommerce division will require senior engineers to approve AI-assisted changes following a series of outages linked to these tools. The company identified a trend of incidents with a high blast radius associated with novel GenAI usage.
Amazon holds engineering meeting following AI-related outages
news
1 min read
Amazon held an engineering meeting in response to recent outages related to its AI services. The meeting aimed to address and resolve the issues affecting the performance of these services.
Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash
news
4 min read
Ring has canceled its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company, amid backlash regarding privacy concerns. The decision follows increased scrutiny and criticism, particularly after a controversial Super Bowl advertisement.
Super Bowl Ad for Ring Cameras Touted AI Surveillance Network
news
3 min read
Amazon's Ring promoted an AI-powered surveillance network during a Super Bowl ad, framing it as a community initiative to help locate lost dogs. The ad encourages users to participate in the "Search Party" program by using their cameras for identification purposes.
Amazon plunge continues $1T wipeout as AI bubble fears ignite sell-off
3 min read
Amazon shares fell over 9% following a surprising capital expenditure forecast, raising concerns about a potential AI bubble. Major tech companies, including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta, collectively reported around $120 billion in expected increased spending.