In one post, Amazon highlighted Blue Jay, a robot it calls “an extra set of hands that helps employees with tasks that involve reaching and lifting,” and its agentic AI system Project Eluna, which “acts like an extra teammate, helping reduce that cognitive load” while optimizing sorting to reduce bottlenecks.
Blue Jay can move 75 percent of the types of items Amazon stores, and is eventually supposed to be a “core technology” powering Same-Day delivery sites. The company says it developed Blue Jay in just over a year based on AI, digital twins, and data from robots already in use, creating a system that “coordinates multiple robotic arms to perform many tasks at once, collapsing what used to be three separate robotic stations into one streamlined workspace that can pick, stow, and consolidate in a single place.”
Amazon Robotics chief technologist Tye Brady says in the company’s post that, “The real headline isn’t about robots.. It’s about people—and the future of work we’re building together.” The blog post also reiterates a spokesperson’s response to the Times report, saying that “no company has created more jobs in the U.S. over the past decade than Amazon,” and touting plans to fill 250,000 positions for the holiday season.
CEO Andy Jassy’s June letter to employees about the impact of efficiency is a bit clearer. He wrote about generative AI, saying, “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
The Times report suggests a similar plan for robotics and automation, citing Jassy’s push to cut e-commerce costs and showing examples of how its warehouse overhauls are creating facilities that process more items with fewer employees who increasingly will focus on taking care of the robots.