It is undeniable that ChatGPT has had big tech companies on their toes since its launch. Every company seems to be racing to integrate generative AI into their products, while companies like Google and Anthropic have launched LLM chatbots aimed at challenging OpenAI.
Amazon is no stranger to AI innovation. The company already has AI Shopping Guides and Rufus, its LLM chatbot released last year as a shopping assistant on Amazon.com. Now, a new report from the Financial Times reveals that Alexa, its AI assistant similar to Google Assistant, is set for a significant upgrade.
Soon after Alexa launched in 2014, it quickly became a household name, but its functionality always seemed limited compared to Google Assistant, handling only basic tasks. The FT report says that Amazon is planning a "relaunch" for Alexa, aiming to transform it from a simple AI assistant to a more sophisticated AI "agent." According to the report, Amazon is working to transplant Alexa's brain with generative AI.
However, the road to a smarter Alexa is not smooth. Rohit Prasad, the lead of AGI at Amazon, told FT that generative AI still struggles with hallucinations and false information, which can be a problem for an assistant meant for the home. You wouldn't want an LLM telling your child something absurd, like suggesting that adding glue to pizza would make the cheese stick better.
Other technical issues include difficulties in combining the basic algorithms that power current Alexa with the advanced (and unpredictable) LLMs, which is a surprisingly tricky challenge.
This new Alexa has been in development since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT. Amazon wants Alexa to have a brain that can integrate with third-party services. According to Prasad, this is challenging due to the vast number of services built into Alexa:
Sometimes we underestimate how many services are integrated into Alexa, and it’s a massive number. These applications get billions of requests a week, so when you’re trying to make reliable actions happen at speed...you have to be able to do it in a very cost-effective way.
Integrating generative AI into existing assistants is not new. There are also rumors about Apple working on a better Siri to compete with ChatGPT, though a full launch won't happen until 2026. Meanwhile, OpenAI is working on an AI agent called "Operator" that can perform tasks like booking flights.
Image via Deposit Photos
0 Comments - Add comment