Big tech Amazon is reportedly developing its own artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot codenamed Metis, aiming to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Metis, named after the Greek goddess of wisdom, will offer conversation with text- and image-focused responses. Similar to other chatbots, this AI can share links, answer follow-up questions, and create its own images.
Amazon also wants the bot to use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), allowing it to find and provide information beyond its initial training. For example, Metis should be able to provide the latest stock prices, a capability that sets the tool apart from existing AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini, which usually depend on pre-trained data for updating their knowledge base.
The chatbot will be accessible through a website and powered by an Amazon LLM called Olympus, which is being trained on two trillion parameters of data—approximately twice the ability of GPT-4.
Amazon chief executive officer Andy Jassy is said to be personally overseeing the development of Project Metis, with Artificial General Intelligence team leader Rohit Prasad in control of the production.
Reports from Business Insider indicate that Metis is scheduled to launch in September. The timeline may be shorter, highlighting Amazon’s drive to keep pace with other companies in the field.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jassy has predicted that AI will enable the company to generate “billions” in revenue in the following years.
“Gen AI is and will continue to be an area of pervasive focus and investment across Amazon, primarily because there are few initiatives that give us the chance to reinvent so many of our customer experiences and processes,” he mentioned during an earnings call in March.
“We believe it’ll ultimately drive tens of billions of dollars of revenue for Amazon over the next several years,” he added.
There has been a lot of buzz about Amazon’s AI initiatives recently. Amazon Q, a generative artificial intelligence assistant that is designed to help customers improve software development workflows and enhance productivity, has been released publicly.
The beta version of Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, has also been launched. Rufus was created to help customers shop and navigate through Amazon’s roster of products.