Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, expressed his enthusiasm for the potential of generative AI, stating that the opportunities it presents are “exciting”. In an interview given to the Financial Times, Jassy also mentioned that many major tech companies have been utilizing these large, generative AI models “for quite some time”.

“I think it’s exciting, what’s possible with generative AI,” Jassy told the FT. “And it’s part of what you’re seeing with models like ChatGPT. But most large, deeply technical companies like ours, have been working on these very large, generative AI models themselves for a long time.”

However, despite already having AI and machine learning technology, such as its voice assistant Alexa and CodeWhisperer, an AI-based code recommendation generator, supporters of Amazon are worried that the company is lagging behind in the field of generative AI as exemplified by ChatGPT that has been all the rage these days.

Amazon’s generative AI technology has been available to some users for a number of years in the form of the popular voice assistant, Alexa. The AI assistant has been a fixture in many households for quite some time, with numerous devices featuring built-in Alexa capabilities. While some individuals use Alexa for practical tasks, such as playing music, adjusting lighting, and setting alarms, others enjoy utilizing the AI assistant for more entertaining purposes, such as asking Alexa to share jokes and stories.

However, unlike ChatGPT, Alexa can’t compose poetry or stories or even write codes, stuff that we thought was only possible by humans. That means, there is a lot of catching up to do for Alexa before it is able to do the sort of things that ChatGPT is capable of at the moment. Amazon is aiming to make Alexa more conversational, which would be a marked change over the current model that is only programmed to provide answers to specific queries.

Andy Jassy mentioned that Amazon is exploring the potential to collaborate with smaller companies to advance its generative AI technology but did not elaborate on the specifics. One notable instance is Stability AI, a rival of Microsoft-supported OpenAI, which announced that Amazon is its “preferred cloud partner” for developing and training its AI models.

One area where Alexa does have an edge is its ability to offer personalized services. It knows what music, the sort of book, or news you would be more interested in. It can remember important timelines and is also more conversant with real-time information. ChatGPT is incapable in these aspects as its knowledge database is limited to only up to 2021 and knows nothing of things that happened beyond that. Given that Amazon already has extensive research in the field of AI and is also open to tying up with other companies specifically doing research in the field of conversational AI, it might have a rival to ChatGPT soon enough.

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