Amazon will reportedly make use of Anthropic’s Claude to power its newly revamped and anticipated AI voice assistant Alexa ahead of the US holiday season. This comes as the retailer’s initial subscription-based voice assistant that used its in-house AI struggled to avail words timeously as well as responding to users’ questions.
The retailer has a minority stake in Anthropic after investing $4 billion into the startup earlier this year in a deal that is currently under investigation by regulators in the UK.
Amazon wants to leverage its partnership with Anthropic
Now, Amazon is moving to revamp its Alexa version to a more powerful generative AI for answering intricate questions, charging $5 to $10 per month, while the Classic voice assistant will continue to be offered freely, according to a Reuters article.
Due to challenges experienced with the previous version of Alexa, Amazon has turned to leverage Anthropic’s AI chatbot – Claude, reportedly because of its better performance, which is comparably ahead of the online retail giant’s Al models.
“Amazon uses many different technologies to power Alexa,” an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters in a statement.
“When it comes to machine learning models, we start with those built by Amazon, but we have used and will continue to use, a variety of different models including (Amazon AI model) Titan and future Amazon models, as well as those from partners.”
Amazon spokesperson.
When Amazon invested into Anthropic, the company promised the initiative was going to make its customers get early access to the company’s AI technology. The retailer is not alone in leveraging partnerships to enhance own models as other tech giants like Microsoft and Apple have also partnered OpenAI to use ChatGPT to power some of their products.
Alexa disappoints though Amazon remains upbeat
Recently, Amazon’s bid to entice users to do shopping through Alexa was rebuffed. The company had anticipated leveraging Alexa as one of its strategies to diversify its revenue streams, but the division has failed to turn into profitability and remains unsuccessful, according to reports.
Alexa is capable of setting timers, play music, answer once off questions and acting as a central hub for smart home controls.
Management at Amazon has given Alexa a 2024 ultimatum to prove how it is going to make notable sales and continue being a formidable competitor, especially in the face of serious rivalry in the market.
Its voice assistant faces stiff competition from peers like OpenAI’s Advances Voice Mode for ChatGPT, Google Gemini’s voice chat mode, and Siri’s upcoming Apple Intelligence update.
However, the new Alexa developed on Claude performs better than the previous models, powered by Amazon’s in-house models.
Traditionally, Amazon has avoided the use of external technology as it needs 100% control of the user experience and customer information.
There is a likelihood that Remarkable Alexa will be launched in October, and a preview of the service is expected to be done during Amazon’s annual devices and services event in September.
However, Amazon has not disclosed when it intends to hold the showcase event.
The introduction of ChatGPT in 2022 created a craze of investment to create better AI software for a wide range of services. This innovation outpaced Alexa, which had been in operation for about 10 years.
However, the new version powered by Claude is expected to carry out more complicated tasks for instance ordering food, as well as drafting emails all from a single prompt. According to Reuters, the premium version of Alexa is also expected to hold conversations with users based on previous questions and prompts.