You were expecting Amazon, yet another company with masses of cloud infrastructure, to give AI a skip? It is to laugh. Nope, the company’s Fire HD tablets, in celebration of the announcement of an update to the Fire HD 8 series (and also in service of a possible stock price bump), have generative AI headed their way.
And not just the new hardware either. The company announced it is “adding new generative AI-powered features to compatible Fire tablets”. The stated aim is to “help customers be more productive and creative throughout their day.”
Amazon Intelligence
Maybe you prefer your information in bite-sized bits to the sound of rhythmic clapping. You know, like a grade one classroom. The above promotional video might be for you.
Amazon’s goal could even be slightly sincere. The new features are Writing Assist, Webpage Summaries, and, um, Wallpaper Creator. No longer will your tablet-based workday be halted by the analysis paralysis caused by choosing the correct wallpaper to match your current working mood. The tyranny of choice has ended. More or less.
Writing Assist does just what it says it will, while still leaving most of the work in your hands. The feature should work with any of the Fire HD’s apps and will convert any missive to a variety of styles, ensuring you don’t use your group chat tone with the person who has to promote you at work. It’ll also offer spelling and grammar suggestions and suggest ways to pep up your work. Basically, it’s Microsoft’s Clippit but you’re not supposed to hate it on sight. We’ll see about that…
Webpage Summaries is the second of Amazon’s integrated trust exercises. This feature “provides quick insights on web articles, so you won’t have to scroll through pages of information”, allowing you to step beyond just reading the headline on X without needing to develop any personal information processing skills. Still, it’ll let you voice your “own” opinion on the internet a little more intelligently and, more importantly, quicker than everyone else. Ah, the wonder of bullet points. As long as Amazon’s AI gets those points right, of course.
Circling back to Wallpaper Creator, this allows users to create “a unique, high-resolution image that you can use as your tablet’s wallpaper” with a prompt. It’s hardly mission-critical and it probably won’t work as well as you’d like. Once it can expertly conjure the prompt “Tony Hawk kickflipping over a shark into a volcano”, get back to us.
Amazon’s new AI features are backed into the newest Fire HD 8 tablets on launch but other Fire HD tablets will get the upgrade later this month.
