Amazon unveils latest warehouse robot as tech giant cuts AI jobs

Amazon unveiled its latest warehouse robot that can receive commands in conversational language, highlighting how AI-powered automation is advancing as companies continue to reduce internal workforces with AI-driven efficiency.

The tech giant’s next-generation Proteus is an autonomous mobile robot designed to understand natural language commands from employees and transport items in warehouses. The announcement was made at the company’s Delivering the Future event in London on Thursday.

The original Proteus was first introduced to Amazon fulfillment centers in 2022 to assist workers, including transporting heavy carts up to 400 kilograms. Currently being used in 25 distribution centers in the United States, the latest version of the robot is scheduled to be rolled out in Europe in the first half of 2027.

Employees will be able to direct the new Proteus in plain language without using technical commands or programming interfaces. This is part of a broader effort to expand its technology in Europe, with Amazon also pledging to invest 10 billion euros ($11.6 billion) to modernize its fulfillment operations in the region over the next few years.

Other robotics advances include Vulcan, the first robot with haptics, and a robotic tote handling system called STARK.

The announcement comes as Amazon continues its AI-driven workforce reduction drive, including cutting 14,000 employees in October as it looks to further invest in AI technology. The company announced in January that it would lay off an additional 16,000 employees in a bid to cut layers and bureaucracy.

CEO Andy Jassy told employees last year that Amazon’s workforce would shrink over the next few years due to the introduction of AI.

“There will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that are currently being done, and more people will be doing other types of jobs,” Jassy said in a memo to employees. “While it is difficult to know exactly where this will impact us over time, we expect this to result in reductions across our workforce over the next few years.”

some tech giants microsoft, sales force, and IBMwas behind thousands of AI-driven layoffs in 2025, and the technology was responsible for over 50,000 layoffs in the US that year. More recently, block, oracleand meta Several companies were among those implementing layoffs.

“We’ve created hundreds of thousands of jobs since we invested in robotics,” Ty Brady, chief engineer at Amazon Robotics, told CNBC on Thursday.

Investments in people, upskilling and smart machines are creating jobs, Brady said, adding that Amazon is creating jobs on a scale not seen in the United States in the past decade.

John Bounfree, Amazon’s vice president and country manager for the U.K. and Ireland, told CNBC that investing in robots actually requires hiring more workers in fulfillment centers, and the company is struggling to hire people with the right skills.

“We’re making a big bet that we’re going to need a lot more people in our warehouses in the future…We’re hiring more people in the same space, so our experience with robots is actually that they’re driving up employment rather than the other way around,” Bounfree told CNBC.

However, not everyone is convinced that robotics will not lead to a reduction in the workforce.

AI robots are already predicted to outnumber the workforce in the coming decades, with a 2024 Citi report showing that AI robots will grow to 1.3 billion by 2035 and more than 4 billion by 2050.

Rob Garlick, former head of innovation, technology and the future of work at Citi Global Insights, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in February that leaders will move to replace workers because humanoid robots already have a faster payback period than humans.

“We have a leadership system that focuses on profitability, both economically and business-wise,” Garlick said at the time. “When you combine profitability with advances in technology, the greatest trade in history is ushered in. Basically, artificial intelligence will be able to do more and more things, better, cheaper, cheaper, and in place of humans.”

The number of young people aged 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training in the UK rose to more than one million by the end of May, according to data published last week by the country’s Office for National Statistics.

Young people face major challenges in the job market, from replacing entry-level jobs with AI to increasing competition for jobs.

Mr Bounfree said this was a “national crisis” and a key challenge was that young people were not prepared for the world of work.

“It’s a combination of growing up during the coronavirus and the age of smartphones and social media…We’ve raised a generation of young people where the idea of ​​participating in a community is sitting in a dark room on your phone and scrolling. It’s not their fault.”

Despite concerns about AI-induced layoffs and youth unemployment, Amazon “cannot find enough people to do the skilled jobs we need,” from robotics technicians to mechatronics engineers, Bounfree said.

The company has created over 6,000 apprenticeships in the UK to address this skills gap, giving staff £3,000 a year to train on nationally recognized courses.