Amazon has already announced that it is going all out on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) across its products and services. In the latest development, the e-commerce giant is rolling out AI across a dozen of its largest warehouses so that it can screen orders for damage before they are shipped to customers.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Amazon said that the technology will help it reduce the number of damaged items shipped to customers, speed up picking and packing and boost its efforts to automate more of its fulfilment operations.
At Amazon warehouses, workers check for signs of wear and tear as they pack the orders. Manually checking all orders for damage can be time-consuming given that most items are in fine condition, the publication quoted Jeremy Wyatt, director of applied science at Amazon Robotics, as saying.
“That’s cognitively demanding because obviously you’re looking for something that’s rare and it’s not your primary job,” Wyatt said.
According to Amazon, fewer than one in 1,000 items it handles is damaged but the number swells to a significant proportion when we take into account that the company handles about 8 billion packages annually.
Two centres are now AI-enabled
Christoph Schwerdtfeger, a software development manager at Amazon, claimed that Amazon has implemented the AI at two fulfilment centres. The company is planning to roll out the system at 10 more sites in North America and Europe.
Schwerdtfeger said that the company has found the AI is three times as effective at identifying damage as a warehouse worker, the publications said.
The company aims to reduce the number of damaged goods that ship out to improve the customer experience.
AI in shopping, Alexa
Recently, reports suggested that Amazon is planning to bring ChatGPT-style chatbot search to its web store and is looking for engineers to bring the power of AI to the platform. The AI will help users find answers to questions, compare products and receive personalised suggestions.
During the Q1 2023 earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company will continue to invest in AI and the company’s virtual assistant Alexa is a starting point of investment in AI. He said that Amazon wants to make Alexa the best virtual assistant in the world.
FacebookTwitterLinkedin
end of article