While Google and Microsoft are waging a fierce war to rule the artificial intelligence sector, Amazon is taking its time to polish its generative AIs à la ChatGPT, which could well integrate with Alexa, its intelligent assistant…

While Google and Microsoft are waging a fierce war to rule the artificial intelligence sector, Amazon is taking its time to polish its generative AIs à la ChatGPT, which could well integrate with Alexa, its intelligent assistant…

The release of the conversational artificial intelligence ChatGPT in November 2022 created excitement on the Internet, but also within the digital and technology sectors. The pressure was even more present when Microsoft entered the field by investing ten billion dollars in OpenAI – the company that developed AI – and began to want to integrate the technology into all its services. What seriously worry Google, which rushed into the race by launching a “red code”, reorganizing its projects around AI and presenting its own tool, Bard. A merciless war that could well extend to other companies, Opera and Baidu – the “Chinese Google” – having already started hostilities. Consequently, some fear that Amazon, which has so far not spoken on the subject, is falling behind in this area.

In an interview given to FinancialTimesAndy Jassy, ​​CEO of Amazon, assures that he is not worried about this and is even quite confident. “I think it’s exciting what is possible with generative AI”he declares before adding that “most large, deeply technical companies, like ours, have been working on these very large generative AI models for a long time”, without giving further details. The company plans to work more with other, smaller companies in the field of artificial intelligence, as is already the case with Stability AI, a competitor of Open AI.

Amazon: an Alexa soon to be boosted with generative AI?

Amazon has had artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for several years, such as its Alexa voice assistant and CodeWhisperer, an AI-based code assistant. Alexa is present in many homes through devices that integrate its functions such as Echo speakers. Some users use it for practical tasks, such as playing music, setting lights and alarms, or managing energy consumption, but others like to use the assistant for more entertaining purposes, such as asking it share jokes or tell stories.

But as wonderful as she is, Alexa can’t compose poems or write codes herself, unlike ChatGPT – although the result isn’t always right. So she’s behind on that. Amazon is currently working on making it more “conversational”, given that it only answers user questions. “We are as committed as ever to Echo and Alexa and will continue to invest heavily in them,” explained in November 2022 David Limp, the vice-president of Amazon, to Business Insider. However, the voice assistant has a big advantage over ChatGPT: its ability to offer personalized services. Indeed, it remembers things like the user’s favorite music, his favorite type of book or even the news likely to interest him the most. He can also remember important deadlines and is perfectly comfortable with real-time information, where ChatGPT’s knowledge stops in 2021. Note that this problem is supposed to be fixed for AIs from Microsoft and Google thanks to their Internet access, but the result is not always perfect. A user has also “argued” with Prometheus about the release ofAvatar 2with the AI ​​staunchly maintaining that the film hadn’t been released yet and that it was February 2022 – she went so far as to claim that it “was not a good user” and that he “wasted his time”.

Amazon is no doubt taking a wise stance in not rushing things, because this kind of artificial intelligence is as revolutionary as it is destructive. Indeed, AIs have a tendency to “hallucinate”, that is to say invent and affirm false information with aplomb. Bard, that of Google, had also made a mistake during his first presentation, which had caused the company to lose no less than 100 billion dollars on the stock market (see our article). This can have disastrous consequences in terms of misinformation and sources, which are not always fully quoted, and therefore verifiable.