No organization in the world operates more robots than Amazon. The company already has more than 1 million robots working in warehouses around the clock to make tens of millions of same-day and one-day package deliveries happen on a daily basis—and Amazon is poised to significantly grow that robotic fleet in the coming years as it establishes new factories to churn out increasingly more capable robot workers.

Despite deploying so many robots, Amazon is also the second-largest corporate employer in the world, with more than 1.5 million full-time and part-time human workers, according to its 2025 annual report. Amazon executives say that the growing robot fleet has eased the burden on its human workforce by taking on the toughest fulfillment center tasks that carry the greatest risks of physical fatigue and injury. But labor advocacy groups and independent researchers point to evidence suggesting that warehouse automation driven by AI is not all upside for the humans who work alongside robots.

“For the last 100 years, most of the automation that we've seen usually happens away from workers—you're taking that high-risk task away from the worker, and you're doing so in a way that is not physically proximate,” Brad Greenwood, professor of business at George Mason University, told Ars. “The rise of collaborative robots really changes that dynamic for two reasons: one is that it is physically proximate, and two, the robot has the ability to dictate the pace of work.”

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For the last 15 years, you've been able to buy a Fire tablet from Amazon. Which Fire tablet? It doesn't matter—like Kindles, they have been pretty much the same year to year. The company's new tablet lineup is a big change, though. Amazon has dropped the Fire branding in favor of Alexa, and the new Alexa Tablets are now Google-certified Android devices.

Throughout the history of Fire Tablets, Amazon downplayed its use of Android. They ran Android apps from the company's Appstore platform, but there was no Google integration with "Fire OS." However, Amazon shut down its app store last year. The new Alexa Tablets run full-fledged Google-y versions of Android with the Play Store and all the apps you'd expect. This contrasts sharply with Amazon's Fire Sticks, which have abandoned Android for the custom Linux-based Vega OS.

The Alexa Tablet lineup consists of three devices, all redesigned with unibody aluminum housings. The Alexa Tablet 8 starts at $230, and the Tablet 11 jumps to $330. They run on the budget MediaTek 8189 processor, but that's still an upgrade from the last-gen Fire tablets. Both devices have 16:10 display ratios that are better for watching video, but the flagship tablet is a little different.

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Amazon has disabled Alexa control of devices plugged into the company's Echo smart speaker’s AUX port.

Users have reported receiving an email from Amazon this week informing them of the change. “This is a reminder that as of today, voice commands to control your Echo device’s Aux input are no longer available. Requests like 'Alexa, play from line in” or “Alexa, set aux input' will no longer work,” an email that Amazon sent reads, according to a screenshot a Reddit user shared this week.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the news to Ars Technica today.

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On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers.

In a press release, Amazon Web Services’ CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across “education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities.”

Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn’t increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. Regarding the latter, Amazon promised to be “water positive” by 2030, while claiming that 75 percent of projects have already met this goal.

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