Amazon is spending millions on "Olympus," a huge artificial intelligence (AI) model that rivals OpenAI and Alphabet, according to sources.
With two trillion parameters, the model has the potential to grow into one of the biggest AI models ever trained.
Rohit Prasad, the former head of Alexa who now directly works with CEO Andy Jassy, is leading Amazon's AI endeavors.
To focus on training models, Prasad has brought together a group of experts from Amazon's scientific team and Alexa AI, combining the company's AI initiatives with specialized resources, as per a report from Reuters.
Amazon's investment in AI is the firm's means of keeping up with the quickly changing field of artificial intelligence.
Though it has previously trained smaller models, like Titan, the tech firm thinks that having in-house models will improve the appeal of its products on Amazon Web Services (AWS), where corporate customers are looking for access to high-performing models.
Online Retail Giant Faced Setbacks on its AI Initiatives
Large language models, or LLMs, are the foundational technology used by AI systems to produce replies that resemble those of a person by learning from enormous datasets.
Larger AI model training is costly and demands a lot of processing resources. However, given the company's perception that AI will become a major factor in future development, Amazon has said that it is prepared to make investments in this field.
Recent years have seen significant setbacks for Amazon's AI aspirations. According to reports, the corporation postponed the release of Titan, another AI model, last year because of ChatGPT, which executives thought was significantly better than Amazon's offering, and technical difficulties.
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Since then, Amazon has made an effort to quickly get closer. A "conversational shopping agent" dubbed "Project Nile" is being developed by the corporation for its online store, per Insider. In September, the company stated that it would include generative AI in its Alexa smart speaker.
Amazon Expected to Disclose Details on Olympus Soon
Based on a unique broad language model, Amazon's new AI capabilities aim to allow Alexa to create messages, have conversations with users, and respond to more sophisticated requests. These AI capabilities are currently in the trial stage for a small group of customers, and Amazon has suggested that access to them could eventually require a membership fee.
The tech giant has not yet disclosed the precise date of Olympus' completion and debut, but it is anticipated to be revealed in December. It is expected that Olympus will do better than Titan, the LLM that Amazon presently offers.
Other recent developments, as reported by CoinGape, concerning online retailers dipping into AI included the release of Ant Group, Alibaba's financial subsidiary, and its most current AI model, Bailing. An LLM rumored to compete with Open AI and other LLM developers is Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, which the Chinese tech behemoth previously unveiled.
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