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.