Amazon launches new cloud tools to compete with Microsoft and Google AIs

Seattle: Amazon on Thursday launched a suite of technologies that can help other companies to develop their own chatbots and image-generation services powered by AI.

The new service Bedrock will allow companies to customise foundation models - the core AI technology that responds to queries with human-like images or messages. Businesses can combine this service with their own data to create a unique model. Amazon has also introduced its own proprietary foundation models under the name Amazon Titan. This comes along with a menu of models offered by other companies like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, and Stability AI.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's biggest cloud computing provider. The Bedrock service also allows customers to test-drive technologies without dealing with the underlying data centre servers powering the tools.

Vasi Philomin, vice president of generative AI at AWS, said the underlying data centre servers are an unneeded complexity from the perspective of the user. "Behind the scenes, we can abstract that away." Servers are using a mix of Amazon's custom AI chips and chips from Nvidia Corp, reported Reuters. Dave Brown, vice president of Elastic Compute Cloud at AWS, said the company is able to land tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these chips, as it needs them. "It is a release valve for some of the supply-chain concerns that I think folks are worried about."

The new cloud tools are aimed at competing with the AI chatbots launched by Microsoft and Google. Amazon is trying to sell the underlying technology to other companies via their cloud operations. While the AI race is heating up, Amazon's approach is different from what other companies have been doing so far. However, OpenAI - creator of ChatGPT - also offers a similar service and allows customers to create a custom chatbot.