Amazon, a leading e-commerce company, recently announced its quarterly earnings. During the investor call, CEO Andy Jassy said that they want to make Alexa the world’s best personal assistant. To do this, they are developing much more capable large language models (LLMs). A report further reveals that Amazon intends to add ChatGPT-like technology to Alexa, in order to make the assistant more conversational and proactive.
The LLM referred to here is called the Alexa Teacher Model and is described by a company spokesperson as being “more generalised and capable”. This allows Alexa to think independently soon even fetching from databases. Examples suggest that this system is linked towards media recommendation, news delivery and storytelling.
Additionally, Google also works with its own language models for Bard, while Microsoft uses a system from OpenAI, with whom Microsoft invested billions. Amazon hopes to differentiate its system from that of its competitors by utilising Alexa information better.
Andy Jassy is the CEO of Amazon. With over two decades of experience in various roles at Amazon, Jassy has played a key role in the development of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is known for pushing for greater innovation within the company. He is seen as an integral figure in the Amazon team and his involvement in the Alexa project ensures its success.