Amazon, the titan of online retail, is making its mark in the world of artificial intelligence with the development of an advanced AI chatbot called “Metis.” According to Business Insider, this chatbot is positioned to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It will be accessible through a web browser and will be powered by Amazon’s internal AI model, Olympus, making it more powerful than their publicly available AI model, Titan.
Metis has an impressive set of capabilities, as outlined in an internal document. It can generate conversational text- and image-based responses, provide source links, suggest follow-up questions, and even generate images. One noteworthy feature is its use of retrieval-augmented generation, or the RAG method. This means that Metis can reference knowledge beyond its initial training data, allowing it to provide more up-to-date answers.
But Metis is not just a chatbot—Amazon envisions it as an AI agent capable of completing various tasks. Business Insider reports that it could potentially handle tasks like turning on lights and booking flights. This flexibility showcases the potential of AI in enhancing our daily lives.
While Amazon is no stranger to the AI field, it has fallen behind its competitors, such as Microsoft and Google, when it comes to AI assistants. According to Fortune, Amazon’s AI-powered version of its virtual assistant, Alexa, is still a work in progress. Former employees cited a lack of data and access to the necessary chips needed to run the large language model (LLM) powering the new Alexa. However, Amazon disputed these claims, asserting that the former employees are misinformed.
In his annual letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy expressed the company’s optimism about the transformative potential of generative AI. He likened it to the technology transformation brought about by the cloud and the internet. Jassy believes that Amazon Web Services will play a significant role in shaping this generative AI future.
As Amazon continues to make strides in the world of AI, it is clear that they see vast potential in the technology. Metis, their upcoming AI chatbot, promises to be a formidable competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. With its advanced capabilities and potential for integration into various tasks, Amazon is positioning itself to be a force to be reckoned with in the AI realm.
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