Investors worry that Amazon will find it difficult to keep up with Microsoft and Google in the AI ​​race

Witnessing the resounding initial victory of Microsoft and OpenAI, no one wants to be late. Google entered the market with the Bard chatbot, Baidu promises to complete the test and officially launch the Ernie Bot chatbot in three wins. Even an e-commerce company like Alibaba has announced that it will soon launch a completely new AI chatbot model this year.

At this point, all eyes are on the remaining big names in the industry. These are companies that fully possess the potential to become a force in the AI ​​market, but have so far remained relatively 'silent'. Take Amazon's case, for example.

Investors worry that Amazon will find it difficult to keep up with Microsoft and Google in the AI ​​race Picture 1

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, ​​in a recent interview with the Financial Times, made his first comment on the company's efforts in the area of ​​innovative artificial intelligence. Jassy acknowledges that the potential of generalized AI models like ChatGPT is really big, and emphasizes that Amazon, like other tech giants, has been investing in the development of large general AI models since long. But over time, there have been significant gaps between the companies, even though the initial potential they possessed was almost the same.

'I think the future of artificial intelligence is exciting. What can happen with generalized AI is part of what you're seeing with models like ChatGPT. Most of the big companies, possessing enough financial strength and deep technical level like ours, have been working on these innovative, massive scale AI models on their own for a long time' .

However, investors do not seem to agree with Andy Jassy. They were disappointed with Amazon's current silence, and expressed concern that the company could fall behind in the AI ​​race against its competitors, especially Microsoft and Google.

Matt McIlwain, CEO of Madrona Venture Group, told the Financial Times: " Microsoft is clearly leading the way and has won a lot of confidence from the market. Amazon has to be aware of the huge trend that is taking place towards apps. AI-driven smart and innovative. Amazon needs to come up with their own strategy quickly ." Madrona Venture Group is a major early investor and has worked closely with Amazon for more than two decades.

Meanwhile, CEO Andy Jassy said that Amazon is pursuing opportunities to partner with smaller companies to grow this business, but did not disclose further details. By far, Amazon's biggest footprint in the field of AI is probably just the virtual assistant Alexa. David Limp, Amazon's Senior Vice President of Devices and Services, revealed his company is focused on improving Alexa by enhancing its natural language-based conversation capabilities, similar to ChatGPT . Alexa's conversational capabilities are still relatively passive and can almost only answer specific questions.

However, according to Limp, while ChatGPT presents itself as a "healthy competitor" to Alexa, it lacks Alexa's unique personality, memory, and knowledge of current events. For example, while Alexa can provide information about the 2022 World Cup, including who scored which goal in which match, ChatGPT currently cannot.

David Pac

Update 18 February 2023