Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

April 10-although Amazon has been developing voice assistant Alexa for years and has invested in cloud computing and machine learning, the tech giant has clearly missed the increasingly fierce artificial intelligence competition in Silicon Valley. However, at a recent meeting of all the staff of the cloud computing department, the company's executives reassured employees that they were definitely not left behind.

"We have made a lot of efforts in the area of AI," said Swamy Siwasubramania, Amazon's vice president for database, analytics and machine learning, at a meeting in March. "We still have a lot of work to do, and I'm happy to share some of our future plans with you."

Last November, with the launch of the popular chat robot ChatGPT, so-called generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) quickly became popular, and the biggest winner was OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research start-up. The tech giants Google and Microsoft (which invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI) scrambled to catch up and soon launched chatbot products Bard and Bing, respectively.

Although Amazon runs a huge cloud computing business, has the largest number of employees and a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, the company does not appear on the new track.

AWS, Amazon's cloud computing division, has announced partnerships with artificial intelligence companies such as Stability AI and Hugging Face, which will allow other companies to use Amazon's infrastructure to build artificial intelligence products. Amazon also uses machine learning in many of its business units, including search on Alexa and Amazon, but its failure to launch innovative artificial intelligence for consumers has led many to speculate that the company is lagging behind.

Recently, many venture capitalists and artificial intelligence company founders gathered at the brain Valley artificial Intelligence (Cerebral Valley AI) conference, and Amazon seemed to be absent. Some attendees said the tech giant seemed to lag behind its peers in the artificial intelligence competition.

At the AWS's recent plenary session, however, executives seemed to be starting to refute this view. Chatbots are just "an example of the application of such models," Siwasubramania said. More than 100000 Amazon machine learning customers have expressed interest in using the company's technology to improve personalization, search engine results and even automate call centers, he said.

Siwasubramania added: "if you look at our innovative record in machine learning, you will see that we really pave the way for mainstream companies and customers to adopt machine learning. We are happy to do the same thing in this area because it is growing rapidly, but we will do it in Amazon's own way. We will listen to our customers to identify areas where they really need help and how to make them successful in this area. "

Amazon had no comment. But it is clear that not all employees have been convinced. An AWS employee commented on the company's executives' comments, saying Amazon "can't even let users use any AWS service like ChatGPT."

Another employee didn't seem satisfied with the company's response and decided to ask ChatGPT how Amazon competes in artificial intelligence. The employee then posted a response from the chatbot, including a fictional Amazon technology, which baffled many of his colleagues.

Discussions about AIGC technology and how it will reshape the world of art, work and life as we know it have recently upended Silicon Valley. But the early leaders of this conversation have always been smaller startups whose tools have become very popular, such as Midjourney's image generator and OpenAI's ChatGPT and Dall-E.

However, their success has raised questions about whether the tech giants are lagging behind in innovation. While companies such as Microsoft, Google and Meta are scrambling to catch up, they also face security concerns as users flock to cutting-edge technologies that behave unpredictably.

ChatGPT suddenly became popular after big technology companies took cautious action in artificial intelligence. This comes at a time when economic concerns are forcing these big companies to cut spending, and in some cases they have even just fired teams that ensure the security of artificial intelligence.

Andy Jassy, Amazon's chief executive, confirmed in February that the company had its own AIGC strategy. "large companies with high technology like ours have been working on these very large artificial intelligence models for a long time," he said. "

Amazon tends to be pragmatic. Usually, the company does not promote certain experiments, but prefers to launch products with a clear market strategy. AWS has sold a variety of tools that take advantage of artificial intelligence, such as AWS Polly, which automatically converts written text into "more natural-sounding human language" and Amazon Panorama, which interprets what the camera sees and automatically alerts people to problems, such as damaged products on conveyor belts.

Amazon has also invested heavily in upgrading its voice assistant Alexa. But voice-activated chat technologies such as Alexa and Siri are very different from AIGC, which can learn and adapt, rather than just answering questions according to preset answers. Amazon had hoped that customers would eventually be able to use Alexa to shop and order products without having to pick up a phone or computer. However, while smart speakers are very popular, voice assistants have not become popular.

As Amazon downsized because of economic concerns and tried to refocus, it has laid off thousands of employees, including hundreds of Alexa employees. But Adam Selipsky, AWS's chief executive, who took the stage with Siva Subramania at a staff meeting in March, reiterated that when it comes to artificial intelligence, "Amazon has a lot of work to do".

Mr Seripsky added that Amazon was developing "some very exciting projects and products" and "I think it will be really cool when they hit the market at the right time".

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