Amazon plays catch-up with Alexa generative AI, shows off new, refreshed hardware

By Greg Bensinger (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday unveiled a slate of new and refreshed devices and updated its Alexa voice assistant with generative artificial intelligence to attract users to the unprofitable product as competition grows from chatbots like Google’s Bard. Alexa will converse more naturally, losing its robotic tone of nearly a decade,…

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U.S. stocks close lower as investors take cover ahead of Fed decision

(Updated at 4:23 p.m. ET with closing prices) By Stephen Culp NEW YORK (Reuters) -Wall Street lost ground on Tuesday, with risk-off sentiment weighing as the U.S. Federal Reserve convened for its much-anticipated two-day monetary policy meeting. All three indexes ended the session lower in a broad sell-off ahead of the Fed’s interest rate announcement…

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The Fed wants to cool spending; a strike, a shutdown and student loans may add ice

By Howard Schneider WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Federal Reserve officials, who have tentatively embraced the possibility they can squelch inflation without a recession, meet this week with an autoworkers strike, a possible federal government shutdown, and a student loan squeeze on consumers posing new risks to that best-case outcome. The United Auto Workers launched a…

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