Days out from the launch of new products being announced by Amazon’s troubled hardware division, leaks have emerged revealing dissent among key staff some claiming Amazon has little chance of success with their hardware products.

Several workers within Amazon’s hardware division that is responsible for Echo and Kindle devices claim morale within the division has suffered amid staff cutbacks and a pipeline of devices in development that they claim, “Are unlikely to prove to be hits”.

Reuters claims that The division, known as Lab126, was a focus for Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, who portrayed it as an engine for future projects, but more recently it has been buffeted by mass layoffs and key executive departures, including leader Dave Limp, a 13-year veteran who has announced plans to quit the business.

Limp, who has overseen device strategy including Ring video doorbells, plans to exit before year’s end.

Amazon is set to name a successor Microsoft’s Panos Panay, who oversaw development of the Surface, according to Bloomberg.

Microsoft declined to comment, and Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Limp follows longtime executives Lab126 president Gregg Zehr and Alexa senior vice president Tom Taylor, who both retired late last years.

Reuters interviewed more than 15 current and former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to their employment terms, who described a hodgepodge of new devices in development, many of them aimed at encouraging customers to use the once-ground-breaking Alexa voice service, which now faces a stiff challenge in the age of generative AI and ChatGPT.

The launch event scheduled for Thursday Australian time, is set to reveal new speakers as well as a new Fire TV stick and a new Kindle Scribe e-reader as well as a household energy consumption monitor — both with Alexa built into them — as well as a home projector to make any surface a screen.

The launch is set to spruik Alexa as a key voice service for the home.

The secretive Lab126, which has long been crucial in the development of new Amazon hardware including the 4K Fire TV Cube we reviewed earlier this week.

Amazon has previously admitted its devices and services business is not profitable.

“To suggest that a few anecdotes paint a picture of reality for an organization as large and diverse as Devices and Services is inaccurate,” spokeswoman Kinley Pearsall said in written response to questions about morale and devices at Lab126.

The “business has been a staple of innovation for over a decade and has created a series of products that are meaningful parts of people’s everyday lives.”

The sources said the lab’s years of losses and shifting strategies have contributed to lowered morale.

Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa is currently facing competition from AI chatbots from Alphabet’s Google and a host of startups, including Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

Amazon said it is developing a generative AI of its own to bolster Alexa but hasn’t revealed much beyond an August assertion that “every one of our teams is working on building generative AI applications.”

Typically accessed through devices such as Amazon televisions and Echo speakers, Alexa provides spoken answers to questions and can be used for purchases from Amazon’s online store.

The company has also worked to make Alexa a home automation hub to allow light bulbs and appliances to be voice controlled.

“Amazon’s ability to infiltrate consumers’ lives is limited because they don’t have control of the smartphone,” said Avi Greengart, president of analysis firm Techsponential. “Voice-first is not a great shopping experience,” he told The New York Post

Alexa had 71.6 million users in 2022, trailed Google and Apple’s Siri, which had 81.5 million and 77.6 million, respectively, according to analysis firm Insider Intelligence.