Amazon launches AI hiring tool to recruit seasonal workers faster

Amazon is pitching software to “humanize” hiring by automating more of it. The company’s new tool, Connect Talent, is designed to run structured voice interviews with AI agents, score candidates consistently and help Amazon process the hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers it needs for the holiday rush.

Amazon Web Services said Connect Talent is in Preview and lets candidates interview 24/7 from any device while recruiters review AI-generated scores, transcripts and detailed candidate evaluations. Amazon said applicants will be told they are being screened by AI. Colleen Aubrey, a senior AWS executive, said the experience is still being refined so it sounds more convincingly human.

That tension sits at the center of Amazon’s latest push into agentic AI, software that can plan, decide and act with little or no human intervention. Amazon paired the hiring tool with what it calls “humorphism,” a design philosophy meant to adapt technology to the way people work rather than forcing people to adapt to machines. In practice, the promise is speed. For workers, the question is whether the system also improves fairness, or simply helps one of the country’s largest employers sort labor at scale.

The stakes are high. Amazon said on October 13, 2025, that it planned to hire 250,000 people in the United States for the holiday season. Seasonal employees were set to earn over $19 an hour on average, while full- and part-time workers were to earn an average of $23 an hour with benefits. That kind of hiring volume creates pressure to automate screening, reduce bottlenecks and fill shifts fast, especially as retail demand spikes.

Amazon said it has used AI and machine learning in hiring for years to help job seekers find roles and complete online assessments, and the company has previously said those tools were intended to improve fairness and give applicants more flexibility. The new system goes further, shifting part of the interview process itself to software. Amazon’s materials say Connect Talent uses science-backed assessments and consistent scoring, but the company has not detailed how applicants can challenge an AI-led interview or contest a score that shapes whether they move forward.

The launch also reflects a larger strategic race in enterprise AI. Amazon said its expanded Amazon Connect lineup now includes four purpose-built agentic AI products: Decisions for supply chains, Talent for hiring, Customer for customer experience and Health for health care. The rollout came as AWS chief executive Matt Garman and OpenAI executives were expected to appear at the event, underscoring how closely Amazon’s cloud business is tied to the wider AI ecosystem.

Amazon is also deepening its work with Anthropic. In a separate announcement, the companies expanded their strategic collaboration with up to 5 gigawatts of AWS capacity and a $100 billion commitment to AWS technologies over a decade. For Amazon, AI is no longer a side project. It is becoming part of how the company hires, sells and scales, with consequences that reach far beyond one holiday season.