American online retail giant Amazon is looking to enter the field of generative artificial intelligence along with its technology rivals. AFP
Amazon on Tuesday unveiled a suite of artificial intelligence models in its boldest move yet to take on rival tech giants in the fast-growing field of generative artificial intelligence.
The launch of its own family of base models marks Amazon’s latest effort to strengthen its position against forerunners Microsoft, Google, Meta and ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
Until now, Amazon’s AI offerings through its AWS cloud service have been largely limited to models from other companies, including Anthropic, an AI startup it has backed.
Even as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI take the lead in AI, AWS remains the market leader in cloud computing, which is necessary for the development of AI tools and products.
“With about 1,000 Gen AI applications running inside Amazon, we have a broad understanding of the problems that application builders are still struggling with,” said Rohit Prasad, senior vice president who leads Amazon’s AI efforts.
He added: “Our new Amazon Nova vehicle is designed to help address these challenges.
The Amazon Nova family includes six AI models that handle tasks ranging from text creation to video generation.
The company says the models are at least 75 percent cheaper and faster than comparable offerings on AWS servers.
The initial lineup includes the Nova Micro for fast text processing, the Nova Lite for basic multimedia tasks, and the Nova Premiere for complex reasoning, scheduled for release in early 2025.
The model supports 200 languages ​​and can be customized using a customer’s proprietary data — a feature Amazon hopes will appeal to businesses developing specialized AI applications.
Two dedicated models target creative content: Nova Canvas for image generation and Nova Reel for video creation.
Amazon highlighted the built-in security measures of the new products, which will be available through AWS’ Bedrock service and come with usage guides detailing specific use cases and limitations.