On Wednesday, Amazon.com revealed a number of modest improvements to several of its artificial intelligence products in an effort to maintain its competitive edge in the midst of ongoing investor enthusiasm for the technology.

The retailer has endeavored to address the perception that competitors Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have established a competitive advantage in the development of generative AI, which possesses the capability to provide near-instantaneous responses to complex prompts or queries in the form of complete sentences or images.

Amazon’s recent conference in New York unveiled significant advancements in its automation capabilities. Vasi Philomin, the company’s esteemed vice president of generative AI, revealed that additional memory will be integrated into the AI agents responsible for automating business tasks. This enhancement will enable each new request to draw upon and build upon previous interactions, resulting in a more efficient and streamlined workflow.

"This allows agents to provide more personalized and more seamless experiences, especially for complicated tasks," said Philomin in an interview Tuesday.

For example, the AI agents have been enhanced with the ability to retain user preferences for seating arrangements, such as aisle or window seats, across multiple flight requests. This feature was previously unavailable.

In addition, Amazon reported that it has enhanced the Q chatbot, which was introduced in November of last year, to provide more effective recommendations for writing software code, addressing one of the most prevalent applications of generative AI.

Additionally, Amazon announced enhancements to its Bedrock service, which enables businesses to develop applications using various AI models. These improvements aim to identify and eliminate instances of “hallucinations,” where AI generates potentially inaccurate or misleading responses to queries or requests.

Hallucinations have been a persistent challenge in AI systems, as they can erode user trust. For instance, earlier this year, Google faced criticism for an AI-powered search feature that suggested adding glue to pizza sauce to ensure cheese adhesion.

The newly implemented controls are anticipated to significantly reduce the occurrence of hallucinations by approximately 75% for specific applications, as confirmed by Matt Wood, Vice President of AI Products at Amazon Web Services, during a recent interview.

Furthermore, AWS, which plays a pivotal role in overseeing a substantial portion of Amazon’s AI development initiatives, is projected to achieve a notable milestone by reaching $100 billion in annual revenue, as announced by the company in April.