Amazon is developing its own AI chatbot to compete with ChatGPT, but is it too late?
Fresh off the news that Amazon is working on an advanced AI-powered version of Alexa called "Remarkable Alexa" (which could double your subscription cost, by the way), Business Insider reports that the company is working on an AI chatbot to compete directly with OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The chatbot would function like most others: it would be browser-based and able to give basic text and image-based answers in a conversational style. Amazon hasn't announced an official name, but the internal codename is Metis, Business Insider said, for the Greek god of wisdom. Metis is powered by Amazon's AI model Olympus, which is more powerful than the company's publicly available Titan model.
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In a market crowded with chatbots, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Anthrophic's Claude, Meta's Llama, and Perplexity.ai, the biggest question is, "What can Amazon do differently?" Amazon is late to the AI game, and with so many already established names, simply matching the competition won't work.
Business Insider said that Amazon wants Metis to leverage retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to take advantage of information beyond the data its model was trained on. Metis might thus be able to offer current information like stock prices or sports scores. Metis would also provide links that source the answers it gives, letting users decide whether they want to trust the information.
Amazon has been making a big push into AI over the past year. In addition to the planned AI upgrades to Alexa, Amazon in April 2023 announced a proprietary set of AI technologies that companies can use to build generative AI applications – like how Microsoft's OpenAI's GPT-4 powers Bing Chat.
The new chatbot could roll out in September 2024, Business Insider said. Amazon has held a big Alexa and devices event every September for at least the past four years.