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Most earnings announcements and ensuing analyst calls are spent discussing all the money — or lack of it — the host company made during the previous quarter. Not so at Amazon on Thursday (May 1).

It spent most of its first-quarter earnings call talking less about the dollars it made and more about how it intends to keep winning the battle for the consumer’s trust. It sounded its traditional theme of the customer experience early and often.

So far, anyway, that customer is proving to be fairly resilient. By the numbers, revenue rose 10% from a year earlier to $155.7 billion, with worldwide paid units up 8%, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts.

Still, executives struck a cautious note about spending patterns. Deal events such as the Big Spring Sale and Ramadan promotions “helped customers save over $500 million,” CEO Andy Jassy said, adding that price sensitivity is elevated “with this being an uncertain moment for consumers.”

Everyday Essentials — groceries, household staples and the like — grew more than twice as fast as the rest of the mix and now make up 1 of every 3 U.S. units sold, a sign that shoppers remain value-focused even as they keep clicking “buy.”

For the current quarter, Amazon forecasts net sales of $159 billion to $164 billion and operating income of $13 billion to $17.5 billion, a bounce of between 7% and 11%. The wide range, Olsavsky noted, “reflects the complex external environment,” including tariffs and a seasonal jump in stock-based compensation.

Pressed repeatedly on the potential for higher tariffs, Jassy said demand had not yet softened. If anything, he said, Amazon has seen “heightened buying in certain categories that may indicate stocking up in advance of any potential tariff impact.” The company pulled forward inventory in the first quarter, while many marketplace merchants accelerated shipments to U.S. warehouses, a tactic aimed at insulating customers from price spikes.

Amazon’s risk, he argued, is muted relative to rivals. Many traditional retailers buy from middlemen who themselves import from China, “so the total tariff will be higher for these retailers than for China-direct sellers” on Amazon’s platform, Jassy said.

With more than 2 million global sellers and “hundreds of millions of unique SKUs,” Jassy expects that breadth to cushion any sudden shifts in sourcing or consumer tastes.

“When there are uncertain environments, customers tend to choose the provider they trust most,” he said.  

Logistics and Agentic Infrastructure

Behind the scenes, Amazon is pushing through the next wave of efficiency projects that helped power its recent margin rebound.

Rearchitecting the inbound freight network to align with the regional fulfillment model “drove productivity in our fulfillment and transportation network,” Olsavsky said, allowing record one-day and same-day delivery volumes while holding down per-package costs.

Excluding one-time charges tied to returned merchandise and early tariff buys, first-quarter operating margins would have been 7.2% in North America and 3.7% internationally.

Looking ahead, Amazon will “build out same-day delivery sites, expand our rural delivery network, and add robotics and automation,” Olsavsky said, noting that the investments designed to protect profitability even if consumer demand slows.

Much of the call’s second half shifted from logistics to artificial intelligence. Jassy called the technology a once-in-a-generation platform shift and said Amazon Web Services already commands a “multibillion-dollar annual revenue run rate” in generative AI services, growing triple-digit percentages despite capacity constraints.

To satisfy developers, AWS has layered its Bedrock service with models from Anthropic, Meta, Mistral and Amazon’s in-house Titan family, positioning the cloud division as what Jassy called the “infrastructure for agentic AI.”

The most visible proof point is Alexa. A new version, free to Prime members or $19.99 a month for others, is rolling out to more than half a billion installed devices. Unlike earlier voice assistants that merely answered questions, the upgraded Alexa can orchestrate complex routines, Jassy said.

“You can say, ‘Open the shades, raise the temperature five degrees and pick dinner music,’ and she just does it. … It really is like having a great personal assistant, which most people in the world don’t have.” Early user feedback, he added, has been “very positive.”

Amazon’s playbook for 2024 looks familiar: lean harder into price, speed and selection while pouring capital into technologies — particularly AI — that can widen those same moats. Whether tariffs tighten or the consumer softens, executives argue that the company’s diversified supplier base, sprawling fulfillment network and fast-growing advertising and cloud franchises give it unusual flexibility.

As Jassy summed up, “We have emerged from past periods of uncertainty with more relative market segment share than we started — and I’m optimistic this could happen again.”

At a time when many American students are struggling to keep up, a private school in Texas is doing more with less, much less.

At Alpha School, students spend just two hours a day in class, guided by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tutor. But results are impressive: students are testing in the top 1 to 2% nationally.

“We use an AI tutor and adaptive apps to provide a completely personalized learning experience,” said Alpha co-founder MacKenzie Price during an interview on Fox & Friends.

“Our students are learning faster. They’re learning way better. In fact, our classes are in the top 2% in the country.”

EXCLUSIVE: MOM’S FIGHT WITH SCHOOL OVER TEEN DAUGHTER’S GENDER TRANSITION GETS BOOST FROM PARENTS GROUP

A private school in Texas uses AI tutors.  (Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)

After the short morning academic block, the rest of the school day is spent building real-world skills like public speaking, teamwork and financial literacy.

Price, a Stanford-educated psychologist, said she launched Alpha after her daughters came home from school bored and unchallenged. The first Alpha campus opened in Austin in 2016 after two years of development.

The idea was simple and bold: compress core academics into two hours per day using technology, and free up the rest of the day for students to grow in other ways.

That model appears to be working. Elle Kristine, a junior who’s been at Alpha since second grade, shared her experience on Fox & Friends.

“I have a lot of friends at traditional school,” Kristine said. “They’re spending all this time on schoolwork, they’re so stressed out, and they’re just miserable.”

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Students at Alpha School are testing in the top 1 to 2% nationally. (Getty Images)

“We get all of our academics done in just three hours a day, and then the rest of the day we get to spend doing what we love and working on passion projects,” she said.

“For me, I’m creating a safe AI dating coach for teenagers. It was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal. What 16-year-old has time for that? It’s awesome.”

Alpha currently operates campuses in Austin, Brownsville, and Miami, serving students from Pre-K through high school.
The Austin location includes both a K–8 academy and a dedicated high school campus downtown. Alpha’s Brownsville school is the fastest growing, and the Miami campus now serves students through 10th grade.

Enrollment is intentionally small, around 150 students at the original Austin site, allowing for a highly personalized experience. 

Instead of traditional teachers, Alpha employs guides who focus on coaching and emotional support, while AI handles the academic instruction.

“Our teachers spend all of their time working with our students,” Price said. “That human connection can never be replaced by AI. But the AI makes it possible to personalize learning for everyone.”

With results and parent demand growing, Alpha is now taking its education model nationwide. The school has announced plans to open seven new campuses by Fall 2025.

Upcoming locations include:
Texas: Houston and Fort Worth (K–8)
Florida: Orlando, Tampa, and Palm Beach (K–8)
Arizona: Phoenix (K–8)
California: Santa Barbara (K–12)
New York: New York City (K–8)

Applications are already open for many of these sites. Tuition varies by location, averaging around $40,000 to $50,000 annually, though the Brownsville campus is subsidized to make it more accessible.

“This is infinitely scalable and accessible,” Price said. “It’s going to help students who are struggling, and also those who are just bored in traditional classrooms.”

Traditional classroom desks like these are being replaced in some schools by flexible, tech-driven learning models, including AI-powered instruction. (Getty Images)

Alpha’s rise comes as school choice found a champion in the Trump administration.

In January, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Education to help states reallocate federal education funds toward school-choice programs, including charter schools, private vouchers, and education savings accounts.

“Parents want and deserve the best education for their children,” the order states. “But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K–12 school.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon praised the policy shift as “history-making” and stressed that the administration is giving power back to families and local communities.

“We are sending education back to the states where it so rightly belongs,” McMahon said. “Families deserve control over how their children learn. That includes AI-powered schools, faith-based options, or traditional public classrooms.”

The Trump administration’s plan also allows parents to use 529 savings accounts to pay for private K–12 tuition and encourages states to apply for federal grants that support innovation in education.

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The Alpha School did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

As President Donald Trump marked his 100th day in office on Tuesday, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said it has cut at least $160 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.

While the department has made several high-profile cuts during the Trump administration’s first 100 days, DOGE head Elon Musk shared that Trump’s cost-cutting is just getting started. 

“It’s a long-term enterprise,” Musk said during an exclusive interview Thursday on “Jesse Watters Primetime.” “Because if we take our eye off the ball, the waste and fraud will come roaring back.”

Watters joined Musk and several team members at the DOGE headquarters, including “Big Balls,” who revealed the story behind his nickname and detailed his work rooting out fraud and waste. 

DOGE’S GREATEST HITS: LOOK BACK AT THE DEPARTMENT’S MOST HIGH-PROFILE CUTS DURING TRUMP’S FIRST 100 DAYS

The DOGE minds elaborated on more shocking discoveries from the department’s first months during their “Jesse Watters Primetime” exclusive. 

With no plans of slowing down, DOGE has made a number of consequential and controversial cuts in recent months.

One of the most talked-about DOGE targets in Trump’s first term was spending at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Fox News Digital previously reported that nearly 15,000 grants worth $60 billion are set to be eliminated, according to internal documents. The grants amount to about 90% of foreign aid contracts and come after a review on spending by the State Department. 

DOGE’s efforts at USAID did not come without opposition, including a federal judge in Maryland who ruled that the moves were likely unconstitutional. In March, a federal appeals court granted the Trump administration’s motion to extend a stay allowing DOGE to continue operating at USAID.

DOGE has also announced over the past few months that it has cut hundreds of millions in DEI contracts and made efforts to cut federal spending by trimming the federal workforce.

“If there’s one group of people who really have a shot at success, it’s the people here. They’re up until 2 a.m. Monday through Sunday. DOGE does not recognize weekends,” one DOGE member told Fox News host Jesse Watters.

ICE CREAM FROM TRUMP AND A ‘COMICALLY TINY OFFICE’: INSIDE ELON MUSK’S WILD 3 MONTHS GETTING DOGE ROLLING

As the team shared cases of wasteful spending from top departments to smaller agencies, Watters asked how the findings made Musk and the DOGE members feel.

“Unfortunately, like the 100th time you’ve heard it, it’s hard not to get a little numb, and by the 200th time, you’re like, well, OK, it was just another day at the office,” Musk replied.

DOGE’s efforts have prompted opposition from Democratic lawmakers and many in the American public. From protests to vandalism, public outrage against Musk and DOGE has escalated over the past 100 days. 

One DOGE member, who joined Musk on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” revealed he dropped out of Harvard University to “serve my country,” but faced backlash. 

“It’s been unfortunate to see lost friendships. Most of campus hates me now, but I think fundamentally, I hope people realize through conversations like this that reform is genuinely needed.”

Another DOGE member praised the work to bring about “permanent change” in the federal government. 

While DOGE has made a mark on the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, the department is still running full steam ahead even as Musk begins his planned departure.

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Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller and Michael Dorgan contributed to this report. 

Story Continues

FutureHouse, an Eric Schmidt-backed nonprofit that aims to build an “AI scientist” within the next decade, has launched its first major product: a platform and API with AI-powered tools designed to support scientific work.

Many, many startups are racing to develop AI research tools for the scientific domain, some with massive amounts of VC funding behind them. Tech giants seem bullish, too, on AI for science. Earlier this year, Google unveiled the “AI co-scientist,” an AI the company said could aid scientists in creating hypotheses and experimental research plans.

The CEOs of AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic have asserted that AI tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery, particularly in medicine. But many researchers don’t consider AI today to be especially useful in guiding the scientific process, in large part due to its unreliability.

FutureHouse on Thursday released four AI tools: Crow, Falcon, Owl, and Phoenix. Crow can search scientific literature and answer questions about it; Falcon can conduct deeper literature searches, including of scientific databases; Owl looks for previous work in a given subject area; and Phoenix uses tools to help plan chemistry experiments.

“Unlike other [AIs], FutureHouse’s have access to a vast corpus of high-quality open-access papers and specialized scientific tools,” writes FutureHouse in a blog post. “They [also] have transparent reasoning and use a multi-stage process to consider each source in more depth […] By chaining these [AI]s together, at scale, scientists can greatly accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.”

But tellingly, FutureHouse has yet to achieve a scientific breakthrough or make a novel discovery with its AI tools.

Part of the challenge in developing an “AI scientist” is anticipating an untold number of confounding factors. AI might come in handy in areas where broad exploration is needed, like narrowing down a vast list of possibilities. But it’s less clear whether AI is capable of the kind of out-of-the-box problem-solving that leads to bonafide breakthroughs.

Results from AI systems designed for science so far have been mostly underwhelming. In 2023, Google said around 40 new materials had been synthesized with the help of one of its AIs, called GNoME. Yet an outside analysis found not a single one of the materials was, in fact, net new.

AI’s technical shortcomings and risks, such as its tendency to hallucinate, also make scientists wary of endorsing it for serious work. Even well-designed studies could end up being tainted by misbehaving AI, which struggles with executing high-precision work.

Indeed, FutureHouse acknowledges that its AI tools — Phoenix in particular — may make mistakes.

“We are releasing [this] now in the spirit of rapid iteration,” the company writes in its blog post. “Please provide feedback as you use it.”

Even the brightest of flames are bound to sputter out eventually, and lo, it would appear that the bright, brief bromance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump will soon be but a wisp of smoke, quickly dissipated to nothing in the White House’s climate-controlled corridors.

In a group interview with a handful of reporters at the White House on Wednesday evening, Musk spent some time reminiscing on the soon-to-be good ole’ DOGE days, whining about his office, garnished with a healthy misunderstanding of Buddhism, just for variety.

Musk explained that the administration is “getting more of a rhythm,” 100 days post-inauguration. Sure, if by “rhythm” he means “plummeting poll numbers and stock market,” then, yes, there has indeed been more of that. Musk said that he’d step back from DOGEing and playing video games Diablo and Path of Exile in his office on a monitor that he described as the biggest in the White House. By contrast, he sniffed that his office is “comically tiny” with “a view of nothing.”

“Which is fine, makes it harder to shoot me,” Musk added. “Not a good line of sight.”

It would appear that his days of sleeping in that office are over, however, due to an upgrade in guest lodgings: Trump frequently invites him to stay over at the White House, where he sleeps in the Lincoln Bedroom and enjoys cute little ice cream rendezvous with Trump.

“We’ll be on Air Force One, and Marine One, and he’ll be like, ‘Do you want to stay over?’” Musk said of “good friend” Trump. “And I’m like, ‘sure.’ He’ll actually call, like late at night, and say, like, ‘Oh, by the way, make sure you get some ice cream from the kitchen.’”

“Don’t tell RFK,” he added, invoking health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Musk, for the record, tends to enjoy caramel-flavored Haagen Dazs. Trump has historically voiced a preference for cherry-vanilla ice cream, with very specific instructions for how it should be served: Two scoops for Donald, one for everyone else. (It’s worth noting, too, that Trump Tower in New York has its own ice cream shop. A “big league” scoop costs $8, and it is the proud bearer of a 2.6-star Yelp rating.)

As he shifts his focus from DOGE to “return to primarily running my companies, which do need me,” (read: Tesla’s profits declined an eye-popping 71% in Q1, and the vehicles have become a scarlet letter among anti-Trumpers), Musk graded his time playing government dress-up as “60% fun, 70% fun,” though it “depends on the week.”

“Being attacked relentlessly is not super fun,” he said. “Seeing cars burning is not fun.”

Weird news for Elon: Those things are not exclusive to….whatever it was he did at DOGE. Remember, the mysterious Amy Gleason was publicly named as the group’s acting administrator in February, though Musk was out front wearing goofy hats and trying to fire people who didn’t work for him. He’s keeping his office, tiny though it may be, he said, and apparently his sparse business cards as well. Even his stationery doesn’t know what to call him, by the way.

“They don’t put anything on my card,” Musk said. “Literally, there’s nothing on my card. It just says my name.” Useful!

Just as he has perpetually declined to say who’s actually running the show at DOGE (and, honestly, what the hell they’re all doing there), Musk kept mum on the future.

“It’s a way of life, like Buddhism,” he said of DOGE, which, as a weird vague government committee has pretty much nothing in common with the centuries-old belief system. “You wouldn’t ask who would lead Buddhism. Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?”

May 1, 2025, 2:11pm

Image from Deadline & BBC

Now here’s a mystery: how is a writer who died in 1976 teaching a new writing course? With a little help from academia and a little help from AI.

That’s right, it’s not Poirot, but generative programming that has raised the writer Agatha Christie from her grave for a new BBC Maestro online course. The new series was produced in partnership with Agatha Christie’s estate, headed by her great-grandson, James Prichard.

As far as AI slop goes, this isn’t the sloppiest: generative programs were used to alter the voice and face of Vivien Keene, the actor playing Christie, and the rest of the project was written and researched by a human team of Christie scholars. Keene got the role of body double after a casting process that started with a “biometrics test” to see if her face was the right shape, and most of her performance involved trying to sit as still as possible: “[Keene] revealed that she had to perform as Christie while barely moving her face and staring down the camera as Christie was never filmed from the side.”

But none of this research and rigor saved the final product from being deeply uncanny. The video trailer has a wild jump scare when Christie’s marionetted
face is revealed. It looks strange—for all of the marketing bluster about how good AI is getting, 2025 robo Christie doesn’t look much better than the 2001 CGI of Tony’s mom in The Sopranos. This is the same problem that so many AI things run into: it doesn’t look very good.

What’s the point of using the AI, then? It feels like an unnecessary gimmick that is reinventing something that doesn’t need reinventing. Why not just have Vivien Keene play Christie? I know that that Cillian Murphy’s face doesn’t look exactly like Robert Oppenheimer’s, but it doesn’t pull me out of the movie. The opposite is happening with this BBC Christie: there’s an uncanny valley strangeness to robo-Christie that makes me uneasy.

To their credit, Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard was skeptical of using AI, saying that he’d “be lying if I said there weren’t worries”, but that the usage was ultimately limited enough for him.”This was not written by AI,”  he explained. “It is a leading academic unearthing everything that she said about writing. And I believe that what we are delivering here in terms of her message is better presented and will reach more people as a result of being presented, if I can use inverted commas, ‘by her.’”

I’m glad the scripts weren’t generated by a program, but again, I don’t see what AI is adding. The choice underestimates an audience’s ability to understand fiction. Maybe I grew up watching too many “dramatic reenactments” on TV, but being presented with an actor playing a historical figure is just as legible as a rubbery digital mask with a mouth that moves on unnatural axises.

My guess would be that this is a proof of concept for more planned courses taught by AI-teachers. Nicki Sheard, the CEO of brands and licensing at BBC Studios talked about how excited the company is for the Christie project, saying the AI “deploys incredible care and craft, great thought and the utmost respect to all of the contributors” and that “the underlying IP is particularly special to us.”

I’m glad BBC cleared this project with the Christie estate, because that hasn’t been a given: Peter Cushing’s family sued Disney when the actor’s likeness was recreated for a Star Wars movie. And Christie’s estate was able to put some good pressure on the production, apparently stipulating that all of the words spoken in the video had to come from Christie. Though I wonder if she ever wrote the line we hear in the trailer, “This is my BBC Maestro course on writing.”

I have a feeling that future projects won’t be as careful, and will be much more bold and overreaching. After all, there’s so much special IP out there to deploy AIs on.

As more of these generatively enhanced projects pop up, they reveal how antisocial the tech industry’s view of the world is. Instead of taking a course with a human teacher, you can take an AI-enhanced writing workshop or an “AI-first” Duolingo class. Instead of trying to meet people with a friend, you can use Grindr’s AI wingman, built with all your data that it gave to Amazon. Instead of live music, you can see a hologram. Instead of making friends, you can make up for your below-average friend number with Zuckerberg’s chatbots. For all their claims, I don’t think that any of these corporations are lying awake at night worrying that you’re lonely.

We don’t have to live like this, people!

Duolingo, a popular platform for learning various languages, announced it will be adding 148 new courses to its arsenal on Wednesday.

The new courses were created using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and were announced shortly after the company publicly released an email from CEO Luis von Ahn stating the platform would be shifting to AI.

Though the company has received a backlash over the move, the addition of the new courses will double its content, making it the largest expansion in the history of the platform.

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“Developing our first 100 courses took about 12 years, and now, in about a year, we’re able to create and launch nearly 150 new courses. This is a great example of how generative AI can directly benefit our learners,” said von Ahn. “This launch reflects the incredible impact of our AI and automation investments, which have allowed us to scale at unprecedented speed and quality.”

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“It used to take a small team years to build a single new course from scratch,” said Jessie Becker, Duolingo’s Senior Director of Learning Design. “Now, by using generative AI to create and validate content, we’re able to focus our expertise where it’s most impactful, ensuring every course meets Duolingo’s rigorous quality standards.”

Language learning platform Duolingo announced the release of 148 courses created with artificial intelligence after previously revealing plans to replace contractors with AI. (Credit: Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Von Ahn said in his email that the new shift would “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.” 

“Al isn’t just a productivity boost,” he wrote. “It helps us get closer to our mission. To teach well, we need to create a massive amount of content, and doing that manually doesn’t scale. One of the best decisions we made recently was replacing a slow, manual content creation process with one powered by AI. Without Al, it would take us decades to scale our content to more learners. We owe it to our learners to get them this content ASAP.”

The company said the new courses will primarily support beginner levels and include immersive features such as Stories, to develop reading comprehension, and DuoRadio, to develop listening comprehension. 

More advanced content will roll out in coming months.

Find more updates on this story at FOXBusiness.com.