Amazon is facing scrutiny over internal plans to automate large parts of its U.S. workforce, as leaked documents collide with the company’s public insistence that it is still aggressively hiring people.

Early automation ambitions and leaked plans

According to reporting based on internal strategy papers, Amazon’s robotics unit has been working toward automating roughly three-quarters of the company’s operations, with the goal of using robots to replace more than 600,000 U.S. jobs it would otherwise have to hire by 2033.¹ The documents describe a shorter‑term milestone of eliminating the need for 160,000 U.S. roles by 2027, a shift expected to save about 30 cents on every item Amazon warehouses and delivers and roughly $12.6 billion between 2025 and 2027.¹

As these plans took shape, executives reportedly anticipated public backlash over job losses and explored language and branding changes, including avoiding terms like “automation” and “AI” in favor of softer phrases such as “advanced technology” and “cobots” — robots framed as working alongside humans.¹

Public stance and corporate messaging

When the documents became public in mid‑May 2026, Amazon publicly pushed back. A company spokesperson said the leak reflected “the perspective of just one team” and did not represent Amazon’s overall hiring strategy “now or moving forward,” arguing that internal memos can be “incomplete and misleading.”¹ The spokesperson emphasized that Amazon is “actively hiring at operations facilities across the country” and had recently announced plans to fill 250,000 seasonal positions.¹

Amazon also denied that top executives were being coached to avoid certain terms about robotics or that its community programs were tied to automation efforts.¹

Leadership’s long‑term AI vision

In parallel, CEO Andy Jassy has been publicly signaling a decisive shift toward AI. He has argued that resistance is futile — “You can choose to howl at the wind, but AI is not going away.”² Coverage of his strategy links this pro‑AI stance directly to the same 2033 horizon in which Amazon is “planning to replace 600,000 employees with robots,” positioning the automation push as part of a broader, long‑term overhaul of the company around artificial intelligence.²

Across these timelines, the tension remains: internally, Amazon explores deep automation to cut costs, while externally it stresses continued hiring and downplays any suggestion of a company‑wide mandate to replace human workers.