Oh, the irony. Our beloved Amazon, the very company that brought us such hits as the Kindle, Alexa, and the Echo, has found itself feeling a tad left out in the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot boom. So much so, that Amazon managers have now resorted to asking employees for ideas on how to use AI chatbot technology, like ChatGPT, to improve their products and workflow. How the mighty have fallen, huh?
An internal document, titled ‘Generative AI-ChatGPT Impact and Opportunity Analysis,’ lists a whopping 67 potential use cases for ChatGPT and similar apps across Amazon’s various teams. Seems like someone’s playing catch-up, no?
But let’s not forget, Amazon should have been the one leading the charge with offerings like ChatGPT. After all, they practically invented e-commerce, voice computing, and cloud-computing, the very industry upon which ChatGPT now stands. To add salt to the wound, Microsoft, their bitter neighborhood rival, owns a huge chunk of ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, and is already busy integrating the technology into its products and services. Ouch.
Amazon, of course, is playing it cool, stating that they’ve been using machine learning and AI for over 25 years in “virtually everything”they do. But inside the company, employees have been quite candid about what’s missing and how they can tap into resources to respond. Amazon is now furiously seeking ways to take advantage of the AI chatbot craze, from crowdsourcing productivity-boosting ideas to launching new generative-AI-powered projects.
Some employees even proposed using ChatGPT in Amazon’s creative process, where developers have to write hypothetical press releases and FAQs before starting on a project. The impact-and-opportunity analysis document suggests ideas ranging from auto-generating software code and marketing materials to providing better customer support, predicting best-sellers, and exploring what makes video content a hit. Sounds like they’re trying to cover all the bases, doesn’t it?
Now, it’s important to note that Amazon isn’t likely to rely solely on ChatGPT for major customer-facing products they’re more than capable of training their own large AI models. However, employees have admitted that ChatGPT is more advanced than similar Amazon offerings, such as Comprehend and Lex, which can feel “cumbersome”and “generic,”respectively.
Despite Amazon’s recent release of its own AI-building platform Bedrock and foundational model Titan, employees remain curious about the company’s response to ChatGPT and generative AI. Both AWS CEO Adam Selipsky and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy have acknowledged the importance of generative AI and its transformative potential for customer experiences.
So, while Amazon may be a tad late to the AI chatbot party, it seems determined to make up for lost time. And knowing Amazon’s track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up leading the dance floor once again.
