Shekar Natarajan, Wal-Mart's vice president of logistics strategy, told reporters the technology is custom-built on top of the drone and is proprietary for Wal-Mart. A control tower will oversee the images on a screen and will send alerts when items are flagged so that workers can go back to the stacks to fix the issue.

Streaming video helps sell shoes because Amazon Prime members buy more, Bezos says. Inc. chief executive officer spoke at Recode's Code conference Tuesday night about artificial intelligence, privacy on the internet, his goals with the Washington Post, Amazon's ambitions in entertainment, and more. Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide. For Netflix, Amazon is a particularly complex competitor because their goals aren't the same. The way Bezos looks at streaming video: "It helps us sell more shoes," he said.

The Washington Post owner talks a big game about defending the media. At the 2016 Code Conference, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talked with The Verge's Walt Mossberg about the „gigantic" potential of artificial intelligence to change everything from shopping to…

Where else but the Code Conference can you expect to hear from the Tech industry's biggest players like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai? Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version gave the wrong year Amazon won Emmys for Transparent. Speaking to the Code conference here, Bezos, whose company has a hit on its hand with the Echo connected speaker, said, "it's hard to overstate how big of an impact this will have on society over the next 20 years. It doesn't mean phones are going to go away or that voice actions will replace screens. As long as people have eyes, they have screens."

The technology behind Alexa, the voice inside Amazon's Echo speaker, could become Amazon's fourth business pillar, alongside retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. Amazon has more than 1,000 people working on artificial intelligence and third-party apps that people have built using the company's SDK, Bezos, the founder and CEO of the company, said at Recode's Code Conference Tuesday. During an interview with Walt Mossberg, he said the company licenses the technology to others so they can embed it in an app or device. There's also a program that allows companies to build apps that teaches Alexa new skills. Bezos called artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning intelligence "gigantic" and says it's probably difficult to "overstate the impact it will have on society over the next 20 years."

Amazon as it sits today is propped up by three major pillars: its retail marketplace, Amazon Prime subscription service and Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing service. Jeff Bezos, however, is open to a fourth pillar. The Amazon founder and CEO recently told Re/code's Walt Mossberg that there are at least two potential fourth pillars in the works: Amazon Studios, the original content arm of Amazon Video, and Alexa, the voice assistant that powers the Echo speaker. Speaking of the latter, Bezos said he thinks there are going to be a bunch of artificially intelligent agents in the world, adding that users may not ask the same AI for everything. The executive said he believes the average household will use a number of specialized AIs and is excited to have helped plant the seed.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says when it comes to technology, "We're on the edge of the golden era." Bezos offered a glimpse of his vision of the future during an interview Tuesday at the Code Conference in Southern California. Of artificial intelligence, Bezos says, "It's probably hard to overstate how big of an impact it's going to have on society over the next 20 years." Bezos says Amazon has 1,000 people working on its Alexa platform, which powers the company's popular voice-controlled Echo device. Bezos also owns The Washington Post and touched on other matters during his talk.

Amazon has three big pillars: the retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. But there certainly would be room for a fourth pillar. It's possible that Amazon Studios, which is producing original video content for Prime Video, could be that fourth pillar, but it's also possible that the Alexa voice assistant, which is packaged inside of the Echo speaker, could end up being the fourth pillar, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told Recode's Walt Mossberg today at Recode's Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Google revealed its own Echo competitor earlier this month, and Apple is also working on an answer to the Echo. But Bezos does not seem to be worried about that.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is very bullish on his company's artificial intelligence push. So bullish, in fact, that Amazon has invested four years of research into its key project in AI -- and stacked that project with a sizable staff. Bezos said at the Code Conference that the team on Alexa, Amazon's smart voice-assistant software, and Echo, its flagship device, is now more than 1,000 employees. "We've been working behind the scenes for the last four years," he said about Echo and Alexa. Other tech giants are moving into the space.

Where else but the Code Conference can you expect to hear from the Tech industry's biggest players like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai? Speaking to the Code conference here, Bezos, whose company has a hit on its hand with the Echo connected speaker, said "it's hard to overstate how big of an impact this will have on society over the next 20 years. It doesn't mean phones are going to go away or that voice actions will replace screens. As long as people have eyes, they have screens." The Echo speaker can turn on lights, access online music and answer queries by waking the speaker by stating the word Alexa.