By Greg Bensinger
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Now reporting to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth.
The Australian “Thor” actor appeared Thursday morning on Amazon’s official internal organizational chart, which was viewed by Reuters, with the title of “Chief Heartthrob” for Alexa Devices, the organization overseeing Amazon’s voice assistant.
Hemsworth, 42, was given an Amazon email address and the additional role of bar raiser, a high-profile internal designation for corporate employees who help with hiring across the company.
“When I’m not starring in movies, I enjoy spending time with my family, campaigning for Ad Meter votes, snake wrangling, bear wrestling, hammer throwing and a nice cinnamon scrub,” read a quote attributed to Hemsworth on the chart.
It was a stunt, meant to promote the airing of Amazon’s Super Bowl advertisement highlighting Alexa’s AI capabilities. In the ad, Hemsworth is shown imagining his own death at the hands of a sentient Alexa AI, including being crushed by his garage door, drowning in his pool and wrestling a bear sicced upon the actor.
Alexa’s voice in the ad assures him in the end that it is a force for good.
Companies shell out big amounts for pricey ads during the annual football championship. This year ads cost about $8 million for 30 seconds of air time. Amazon’s rivals in AI, Anthropic and OpenAI, are also airing Super Bowl commercials this year.
For Amazon employees, though, Amazon’s splashy antics appeared tone deaf in light of recent layoffs, and a stock price reeling from a disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report Thursday. The company last week laid off 16,000 corporate employees, including many working on Alexa.
The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, began widespread layoffs on Wednesday, gutting a third of employees.
“This definitely makes up for the hollow feeling of cleaning out my peer’s desk and meeting him out front with his boxes given he was laid off last week,” wrote one employee on a social media site used by Amazon employees and viewed by Reuters.
“It’s less of a joke than it is an insult to the rest of us,” wrote another.
An Amazon spokesperson called it “a fun internal Easter egg as we head into the Big Game this weekend.” She declined to address employees’ concerns. Representatives for Hemsworth did not respond to a request for comment.
Amazon this week said its new Alexa+ service running on generative AI would be available to all Prime members. Alexa, which can answer questions and enable purchases and some home automation by voice, has been a money loser since its introduction more than a decade ago. The company has been pushing to turn that around with a costly AI-imbued revamp of Alexa, culminating in this week’s ad.
On Hemsworth’s profile page, Amazon employees quickly awarded him with badges given for showing certain propensities outside of regular work, including being a flan enthusiast, CPR instructor and proficient in Mandarin. He had garnered nearly 500.
By late Thursday, though, Hemsworth was demoted. He is now reporting to the head of devices and services.
(Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Shri Navaratnam)
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