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Amazon expands its Quick AI assistant on mobile in challenge to Microsoft and Google

10 September 2026 at 18:35
Amazon Quick’s new activity feed on mobile: the morning priority view, left, and the full feed. (Amazon Images)

Amazon is adding the Activity Feed and other features from its Quick desktop app to the AI assistant’s mobile apps for iOS and Android.

The Activity Feed is the signature feature of Amazon Quick. It combines email, Slack messages, calendar invites and CRM updates into one prioritized list, and lets people act on items (opening and responding to emails, for example) without switching apps.

Amazon said Wednesday that the Quick desktop app, released in preview in April, is now generally available on Windows and macOS. The company also said Quick’s agents now run in the cloud, so they keep working after a laptop is closed and deliver results to the feed.

The desktop and mobile apps now sync, as well, so a task started on a laptop can be picked up on a phone, for example.

Quick has a free tier, with paid individual plans starting at $20 per user per month billed annually, and business plans running $20 to $40 per user per month.

Quick is Amazon’s entry in a crowded market for AI assistants at work, competing with Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic and others. Amazon’s announcements cited business customers for Quick including Southwest Airlines, LabCorp and the PGA Tour.

The desktop app came together fast, as part of a new effort inside Amazon to use small teams to move quickly: Swami Sivasubramanian, the AWS vice president of agentic AI, told GeekWire in June that a team of about six engineers started in late January and shipped April 28.

Warner Bros. Discovery sues Amazon over HBO Max exec hire, seeks order blocking future poaching

27 July 2026 at 17:20
GeekWire Image / Company Logos

A new Warner Bros. Discovery lawsuit against Amazon, accusing the tech giant of poaching a top HBO Max marketing executive 16 months before her contract expired, comes with an unusual request: a court order barring Amazon from hiring any employee of the media conglomerate as long as they’re under contract.

The suit, filed July 21 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, centers on Pia Barlow, the longtime HBO Max executive who was announced last week as Amazon MGM Studios’ new head of series marketing. Her Warner Bros. Discovery contract ran through October 2027.

She resigned in June and was due to start at Amazon on Aug. 3.

Warner Bros. Discovery accuses Amazon of β€œhurriedly seeking to pirate away a number of contracted employees,” calling the company a β€œdigital bull in a china shop” that chose to build its entertainment workforce by raiding Hollywood rather than hiring from scratch.

The suit says Amazon tried weeks earlier to recruit another WBD executive under contract through December 2027 and failed, and was pursuing at least one more when the suit was filed.

The complaint says Barlow’s departure β€œconveyed a troublesome message throughout Plaintiffs’ executive ranks” β€” that contractual commitments could be disregarded β€œwhenever a larger paycheck appears.”

Amazon declined to comment in response to GeekWire’s inquiry.

The company acquired MGM in 2022 for $8.5 billion, its second-largest acquisition ever behind the $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in 2017. The deal brought a catalog of more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows, and the studio was rebranded Amazon MGM Studios in 2023.

It’s led by Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios.

Warner Bros. Discovery itself is in the middle of being sold. Paramount Skydance agreed in February to buy the company for about $81 billion, outbidding Netflix, but 12 state attorneys general sued this month to block the deal, and Paramount has pushed its closing deadline to as late as June 2027.

The complaint goes further, alleging Amazon didn’t just recruit Barlow but also picked her lawyer. Warner Bros. Discovery says the firm now representing her is based less than a mile from Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and β€œhas a well-publicized, long-standing relationship with Amazon as outside litigation counsel,” and that Amazon is paying its fees. The firm isn’t named in the complaint.

Barlow, who lives and works in Los Angeles, is not a defendant.

Warner Bros. Discovery says its lawyers exchanged letters with Amazon and with that attorney before filing suit, demanding Barlow not leave. It makes the fee allegation on β€œinformation and belief,” a legal phrase indicating a claim based on inference rather than direct evidence.

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