Jeff Bezos at the Economic Club of Washington s Milestone Celebration event in September 2018 (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty)
An explicit photo used in an alleged extortion attempt on Jeff Bezos was lifted from a gay escort site by his lover’s brother, a new biography has claimed.
The Amazon mogul, 57, alleged in 2019 that he was involved in an unsuccessful extortion attempt by the
National Enquirer, which had obtained intimate photos and messages between him and the woman he was having an affair with, TV anchor Lauren Sanchez.
One photo purportedly showed Bezos’ penis, which the
National Enquirer claimed its editors decided not to publish “out of respect to the billionaire’s privacy” – but it seems the truth might be a little more complicated than that.
Listen • 47:17
Jeff Bezos speaks at the the Amazon re:MARS convention in Las Vegas. (John Locher, File/AP Photo)
Who is Jeff Bezos? In the second part of our series
Amazon: The Prime Effect, we hear what the creation of Alexa tells us about the man who built Amazon.
Guests
Also Featured
Janet Slifka, director of research science in the Alexa A.I. division at Amazon. She’s worked on Alexa technology since 2012.
First Person: ‘Origins Of Alexa’ Transcript
This hour is our second in our series
Amazon: The Prime Effect where we take an in-depth look at the myriad ways Amazon has changed the way we shop, work and how we live. In this episode, we focus on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos his ambitions, and how he built the company and its culture.
Jeff Bezos once got fed-up with an early prototype of Alexa.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once told an early prototype of his company s virtual assistant Alexa to shoot yourself in the head in frustration, a new book has revealed. Jeff Bezos was testing the device at his Seattle home in 2013 when he lost his temper at its lack of understanding, Brad Stone wrote in his book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, which was released on Tuesday. In pique of frustration over its lack of comprehension, he told Alexa to go shoot yourself in the head , Mr Stone wrote in his book, according to the Daily Mail.
Photo: David Becker (Getty Images)
Perhaps one of the most recognizable (and accidentallytriggered) voices in America, Amazon’s Alexa sounds like an A.I. With its broken phrasing, eerie calm, and uncanny approximation of gentle consumerism, Alexa can be heard in households from sea to shining sea, ordering toilet paper, agreeing to play the new Maroon 5, and laughing at inappropriate times.
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Given how tech-forward Amazon’s business model has become, moving from the world’s largest book retailer to one of the world’s great purveyors of labor abuses, it would be fair to assume that Alexa isn’t a real person. Many probably believe it is an ethereal, amorphous digital specter that haunts every house with an Alexa unit by responding to people on TV that happen to utter its name. But, according to Brad Stone, author of the upcoming
Good morning The UN’s Middle East envoy issued a stark warning that “we’re escalating towards a full-scale war” as violence between Israeli jets and Palestinian militants continued this morning, bringing the death toll to 45. Tor Wennesland, who is expected to brief the UN security council on the crisis today, urged leaders on all sides to “take the responsibility of de-escalation”. “Stop the fire immediately. We’re escalating towards a.