Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool designed to solve a major pain point in its quick delivery apparatus: drivers rummaging through cluttered vans at each stop searching for packages.

The technology projects a green circle on packages to be delivered at each stop and red Xs on those to be delivered later, Amazon said Wednesday at a Nashville media event focused on its logistics and online shopping initiatives.

Called Vision Assisted Package Retrieval and in development since 2020, the tool will be deployed in 1,000 Amazon vans next year and will shorten the typical delivery route by about 30 minutes, the company said.

The tool uses computer-vision technology initially developed in Amazon warehouses to identify products without using barcode scanners. The technology was adapted for vans’ cramped cargo areas and integrated with delivery-route navigation software.

“Delivery drivers will no longer have to spend time organizing packages by stops, reading labels or manually checking key identifiers like a customer’s name or address to ensure they have the right packages,” Amazon said in a release. “They simply have to look for VAPR’s green light, grab and go.”

The announcement underscores Amazon’s shifting priorities under Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy, who assumed the role from founder Jeff Bezos in 2021. Bezos wowed the media with grandiose announcements that looked far into the future, such as fleets of autonomous delivery drones – a project still in the testing phase more than a decade after he announced it.

Under Jassy, who steered the company through layoffs and shuttered dozens of moonshot projects, the focus is on near-term efforts to shave costs and make Amazon’s low-margin e-commerce business more appealing to Wall Street investors prone to fret about slim profits.

The Seattle-based company relies on a network of small businesses that use 100,000 vans and employ 390,000 drivers to deliver packages. By reducing delivery times, Amazon can limit what it has to pay these delivery service partners, which typically hire drivers paid by the hour.

Amazon announced several other initiatives:

• AI Shopping Guides designed to help customers research more than 100 product types, ranging from televisions and dog food to headphones and face moisturizers.
• A next-generation fulfilment center in Shreveport, Louisiana, that uses artificial intelligence and robotics to help workers pick and pack orders.
• An expansion of same-day prescription drug delivery that next year will bring the offering to almost half of the US

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Amazon.com is expected to join Google and Microsoft on Thursday in reporting a surge in capital spending on artificial intelligence as Big Tech companies rush to capitalize on the booming technology.

The e-commerce giant’s capital investments – mostly for building cloud and generative AI infrastructure – is expected to have risen 43% in the second quarter to $16.41 billion, according to LSEG data. That represents a roughly $1.5 billion increase from the previous three months.

The steep spending is also expected to pressure Amazon’s margins, outweighing benefits from cost cuts and supply chain efficiencies that are aiding the retail unit’s profitability.

The company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) business has long dominated the cloud-computing market, but it has been facing tough competition from Microsoft in recent quarters after the Windows maker rolled out AI-powered services to its Azure cloud business.

In response, Amazon has partnered with the likes of Anthropic and offered startups free credits that cover the cost of using major AI models to boost the market share of its AI platform Bedrock. It also named a new head for the AWS unit in May.

Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet also said earlier this month they would plow ahead with investments even as the payoff from AI takes longer than some investors had hoped. This knocked Big Tech stocks whose valuations have soared this year on the promise of AI.

“Amazon’s capex spend will certainly be scrutinized closely. It has been slow on the adoption of AI and is skewed towards smaller companies which have struggled in the high interest-rate environment,” said Ben Barringer, analyst at Quilter Cheviot.

“We would expect AWS to start speeding things up in its AI development going forward.”

Amazon shares have risen about 23% this year. The stock has shed more than 6% since July 8, when it hit a record, part of a broader market selloff led by U.S. megacaps.

Growth at AWS is likely to have stayed similar to the previous quarter at just over 17%, according to LSEG data. But, Morgan Stanley analysts said: “AWS needs to grow 18%+ in order to … ensure investors of AWS’s (AI) positioning and its ability to generate high-teens growth through this heavy capex investment period.”

As a result of the spending increase, Amazon’s gross profit margin growth is expected to have slowed to 1.3% in the April-June quarter, compared with 2.6% in the previous quarter and an average of 2.7% over the past two years.

Growth in its North American retail business likely slowed to 8% between April and June, from 12.3% in the January-March quarter, amid signs of a wider slowdown in consumer spending and some competition from new and fast-growing Chinese players such as Temu and Tiktok Shop that are enticing more U.S. shoppers.

Amazon’s total revenue is expected to have grown 10.6% to $148.56 billion – the slowest rise in five quarters.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)