When Amazon Employees Call Their Own AI Tools "Slop"

Over 1,000 Amazon employees just signed an open letter that tech executives will pretend doesn't exist. The petition, organized by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, warns that the company's "all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development" could cause "staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth," according to reporting by WIRED.

The signatories aren't junior workers or peripheral staff. They include high-ranking engineers, senior product leaders, marketing managers, and warehouse employees across multiple divisions. One senior engineering manager with over twenty years at Amazon told WIRED they signed because "the current generation of AI has become almost like a drug that companies like Amazon obsess over, use as a cover to lay people off, and use the savings to pay for data centers for AI products no one is paying for."

That's not external criticism. That's a twenty-year veteran calling their employer's strategy a drug addiction funded by layoffs for products nobody's buying. When internal advocates start using that language, the disconnect between executive vision and ground-level reality has become substantial.

What Amazon's AI Push Actually Looks Like on the Ground

The letter emerged from conversations that began last month, eventually collecting over 2,400 supporters from other organizations including Google and Apple. The demands are specific: abandon carbon fuel sources at data centers, prevent AI technologies from being used for surveillance and mass deportation, and stop forcing employees to use AI in their work.

That last demand deserves attention. Some Amazon engineers are reportedly under pressure to use AI to double their productivity or risk losing their jobs, according to a software development engineer in Amazon's cloud computing division who spoke with WIRED. The problem? Amazon's tools for writing code and technical documentation "aren't good enough to reach such ambitious targets," the engineer said.

Another employee called the AI outputs "slop." Not "needs improvement" or "still developing." Slop. That's the internal assessment of tools that executives are simultaneously touting as productivity multipliers and using as justification for cutting 14,000 jobs.

Amazon's AI Math: $10 Billion in Sales, 35% More Emissions

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced last month that Rufus, Amazon's shopping chatbot, was on track to increase sales by $10 billion annually. That number justifies substantial investment in AI infrastructure. What it doesn't address is the environmental cost of that infrastructure or whether the technology forcing workers out of jobs actually helps the workers who remain.

The activists note that Amazon's emissions have grown approximately 35 percent since 2019 despite the company's commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040. AI systems demand significant power, forcing utility companies to turn to coal plants and other carbon-emitting energy sources to support the data center expansion. At a recent companywide meeting, an executive stated that demand for data centers would grow tenfold by 2027, according to one employee who spoke with WIRED. The same executive touted a strategy for cutting water usage by 9 percent. As the worker observed: "That's such a drop in the bucket. I would love to talk about the 10 times more energy part and where we are going to get that."

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told WIRED the company remains committed to net-zero emissions by 2040, stating "we recognize that progress will not always be linear, but we remain focused on serving our customers better, faster, and with fewer emissions." He didn't address concerns about internal AI tools or external uses of the technology.

The Manufactured AI Race and Its Human Cost

One of the letter's central arguments is that the perceived "race" to build the best AI has empowered executives to trample workers and the environment. The senior engineering manager with twenty years at Amazon told WIRED this manufactured urgency provides cover for decisions that wouldn't survive normal scrutiny—like cutting thousands of jobs while simultaneously claiming the technology will make remaining workers twice as productive.

The letter demands that Amazon establish "ethical AI working groups" involving rank-and-file workers who would have input on how emerging technologies are used in their roles and how AI might automate aspects of their work. This isn't anti-technology sentiment. The organizers explicitly state they're not against AI and are "optimistic about the technology," according to WIRED's reporting. They want companies to take a more thoughtful approach to deployment.

A decade-long veteran in Amazon's entertainment business told WIRED: "It's not just about what will happen if they succeed in developing superintelligence. What we're trying to say is, look, the costs we're paying now aren't worth it. We are in the few remaining years to avoid catastrophic warming."

Why This Employee Activism Matters in 2025

The letter represents rare tech employee activism during a year marked by President Trump's return and rollback of labor protections, climate policies, and AI regulations. Many workers feel uneasy speaking out about perceived unethical conduct while automation threatens entry-level roles. That 1,000 employees signed anyway suggests the internal discontent runs deeper than companies acknowledge publicly.

Orin Starn, a Duke University anthropologist who spent two years undercover as an Amazon warehouse worker, told WIRED the moment is ripe for challenging the company: "Many people have tired of brazen billionaire excess and a company with nothing more than cosmetic PR concern about climate change, AI, immigrant rights, and the lives of its own workers."

The climate justice group, which formed in 2018, claims credit for influencing some of Amazon's environmental pledges through previous walkouts, shareholder proposals, and petitions. Amazon's spokesperson says climate goals were in the works before the advocacy group emerged. What's undisputed is that Amazon's emissions have grown substantially since those pledges were made.

The Gap Between AI Promise and AI Reality

What this letter exposes is the distance between executive narratives about AI and the experience of people actually building and using the systems. Executives tout productivity gains and revenue increases. Engineers call the output "slop" and report being pressured to use tools that can't meet the productivity targets justifying their colleagues' layoffs.

Amazon employed nearly 1.58 million people as of September, down from a peak of over 1.6 million at the end of 2021, according to WIRED. About 14,000 jobs were cut last month "to better meet the demands of the AI era." The workers who remain are being told to double their productivity using AI tools that, according to internal accounts, aren't capable of delivering those gains.

The climate justice group intentionally targeted their signature milestone to coincide with Black Friday, aiming to remind the public about the cost of technology powering one of the world's biggest shopping platforms. Whether this pressure influences Amazon's approach remains uncertain. What's clear is that internal consensus about the company's AI strategy doesn't exist, and the people building the systems have substantial concerns that executives are publicly dismissing or ignoring.

When senior engineers with decades at a company start describing the AI strategy as drug-like obsession and calling the outputs slop, that's not a messaging problem. That's a strategy problem that no amount of $10 billion revenue projections will fix.