Is Amazon about to outshine Microsoft, Google, Meta, and OpenAI? According to a new report, insiders claim that Amazon is developing a direct competitor to ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot. Amazon's chatbot aims to tackle a significant challenge that plagues competing services – their reliance on outdated or non-updated training data.
The new chatbot, named Metis after the Greek goddess of wisdom (and mother of Athena), follows Amazon's tradition of using Greek mythology names for its flagship projects. While its main AI model, Titan, is considered less powerful than its counterparts, the model powering Metis, dubbed Olympus, is expected to be significantly more potent.
Like its competitors, Metis will offer a range of multi-modal capabilities, providing answers based on both text and images. However, unlike its rivals, it will also provide links to back up its answers. This gives it a significant edge by integrating the ability to search beyond its training data for more reliable answers. One of the main issues with most chatbots is their limitation to the data used for their training. Amazon seems intent on solving this problem, potentially unsettling Google, which is already wary of the competition.
Metis employs a solution known as retrieval-augmented generation, allowing it to add real-time data. This method enables the chatbot to search for additional and up-to-date information on the internet instead of relying solely on its training data. For instance, Metis could theoretically retrieve current stock market data, something that ChatGPT or Claude cannot (yet) do.
Another advantage of Metis is its ability to act as an AI agent. This doesn't mean a secret agent but more like an assistance agent, capable of performing complex tasks such as planning a vacation itinerary based on user requests or operating your smart home – similar to the AI that Apple introduced at its latest developer event. It is important to note that Metis is not yet considered a commercial product, and it is unclear when Amazon will officially unveil it.
The online retail and cloud computing giant, much like Apple, is one of the last big tech companies to enter the generative AI battlefield. Like Apple, Amazon was a pioneer in the field with Alexa, but unlike the iPhone maker, Amazon has built a large AI platform over many years. It is considered one of the leaders in the ML (machine learning) world and provides numerous AI infrastructure services to companies and organizations through its cloud computing arm, AWS.
In fact, AI is somewhat of a "baby" for the current CEO, Andy Jassy, who previously managed (and helped establish) AWS. The company has heavily invested in Anthropic, which developed the chatbot Claude and competes with OpenAI. It launched an enterprise chatbot named Q, which has so far met with limited success. Additionally, it has AI chip development activities, largely based on the acquisition of the Israeli company Annapurna Labs about eight years ago. However, its chips are less successful due to Nvidia's dominance. Despite being very focused on artificial intelligence behind the scenes, Amazon is still seen as lagging in the public eye.
Will Metis, the new chatbot, succeed in restoring Amazon's innovative image that it had when it launched Alexa and smart speakers? It's uncertain. But what is certain is that Jassy has already declared plans for AI-based projects to generate "tens of billions of dollars" in revenue. Considering that it already generates about a billion dollars a year from the field, it seems Amazon is on its way to becoming a leader in the field if its bet pays off.