Tech giants are touting new artificial intelligence tools that they say will revolutionize work, learning and creativity. They also have something else in mind: rejuvenating sales in their cloud-computing businesses. Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google--have put the potential of new, so-called generative AI at the center of their sales pitches to try to capitalize on the explosion in interest in applications like the viral chatbot ChatGPT.

The actions look something like those of an amusement park claw game, except they are executed rapidly and smoothly, just like the countless movements that workers undertake to pick and pack millions of online orders each day in warehouses across the world. Top news and in-depth analysis on the world of logistics, from supply chain to transport and technology. But the robotic device, known as Sparrow, is outfitted with suction cups and artificial intelligence software rather than the eyes and hands of human workers. It is the latest attempt by Amazon. Warehouse workers pick items up, sort them and put them down millions of times a day. But Amazon is trying to get Sparrow to do something that robots have long struggled with--picking up a variety of objects as easily as humans can, as well as identifying them by characteristics such as color, shape and size.