Following surging sales of the new single-task e-reader, Amazon executives moved quickly on Tuesday to reassure shareholders that the device’s complete lack of algorithmic interruptions was an oversight. The company promised a mandatory firmware update would soon resolve the alarming periods of uninterrupted focus users have been experiencing.
The $280 color device has become a surprise hit among consumers seeking a respite from the relentless hype of artificial intelligence. However, internally, Amazon views the product’s shipped state as a catastrophic failure of basic quality assurance, noting that the hardware somehow bypassed multiple review stages without anyone noticing it was just a screen that displays books.
We are deeply embarrassed that a piece of our hardware made it to market at scale without a single conversational agent trying to summarize the chapter you are currently looking at.
Current Colorsoft users report being able to read for up to an hour without the device suggesting a completely different novel, interrupting the narrative to ask for a prompt, or automatically rewriting the ending of Moby-Dick to be more engaging. The company also apologized for the device's color e-ink display, which currently only renders the actual cover art of the purchased book rather than generating a personalized, photorealistic image of the user's face superimposed onto the author's body.
Lin confirmed that the engineering team is working through the weekend to push a breaking change that will eliminate the device's ability to be read in silence. By next quarter, all Colorsoft models will feature an always-on co-pilot that dynamically inserts sponsored products into the protagonist’s hands and requires users to argue with a chatbot to turn the page.
The hardware division has reportedly paused all manufacturing until the supply chain can source a processor capable of making the reading experience significantly more exhausting.