The CEO says Amazon is at the forefront of artificial intelligence with Alexa

Although it has not yet launched an artificial intelligence (AI) tool aimed at the general public, similar to ChatGPT, Amazon thinks it’s getting ahead of competitors with its famous Assistant hypothetical. This statement was made by Senior Vice President of Big Technology, Rohit Prasad, this Wednesday (17).

In an interview with CNBC, said that “Alexa has been and has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence for a long time”. Thus, it would be a mistake to think that the giant retailer has lagged behind in the race for leadership in this segment, which includes tools capable of providing creative answers to simple questions, from the point of view of the CEO.

Also according to Prasad, who is also the chief Alexa scientist, Amazon’s virtual assistant has advantages over the language model developed by OpenAI. Among them is the wide availability of technology and voice communication, while the viral chatbot is browser-based.

Rohit Prasad, Chief Scientist in Amazon’s Virtual Assistant division.source: Getty Images / Clone

Recently released data from the giant retailer suggests this Artificial intelligence powers more than 500 million devices globally, from smart speakers to thermostats. Launched in 2014, Alexa relies on machine learning to respond to users.

Smarter Alexa

In the conversation, Prasad revealed that the tech giant is working on a new version of the language model responsible for powering the voice assistant. The goal is to make Alexa more conversational and intelligentwhich makes it able to handle complex requests and better understand users.

It is still unable to program software and perform other complex tasks like those performed by AI chatbots, which could change soon. It’s worth noting that the company’s CEO, Andy Jassy, ​​revealed Amazon’s “massive” investment in generative AI led to the launch of Bedrock, which targets customers in the cloud.