Amazon turns to Claude AI to Revamp Alexa AI By CIO Tech Outlook Team

Amazon turns to Claude AI to Revamp Alexa AI

CIO Tech Outlook Team | Saturday, 31 August 2024, 01:36 IST

Amazon revamped Alexa, due for release in October ahead of the U.S. holiday season, will be powered primarily by Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence models rather than its own AI.

It was reported in June that Amazon plans to charge $5 to $10 a month for its new "Remarkable" version of Alexa, which will use powerful generative AI to answer complex queries while still offering the "Classic" voice assistant for free.

However, one of the people said that initial versions of the new Alexa using in-house software simply struggled for words, sometimes taking six or seven seconds to acknowledge a prompt and reply.

That's why Amazon turned to Claude, an AI chatbot developed by startup Anthropic, as it performed better than the online retail giant's own AI models, the people said.

Alexa, accessed mainly through Amazon televisions and Echo devices, can set timers, play music, act as a central hub for smart home controls and answer one-off questions.

Amazon Inc is a US-based multinational tech company involved in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is regarded as one of the top five American technology companies, along with Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.