Amazon Going Big On Generative AI, Plans To Include It In Search And New Robot3 min read
Amazon is planning to integrate a ChatGPT-like bot into its online store and is reportedly also developing a home robot that can see, remember, and converse with you.
Generative AI has attracted the attention and investment of big tech companies since the emergence of ChatGPT, thanks to the range of practical applications offered by the technology. After Google and Microsoft announced their AI-powered search engines, Amazon is now looking to plug the technology into its web store’s search.
As unearthed by Bloomberg, a recent job posting by Amazon include references toward a ChatGPT-like experience in search.
“We are reimagining Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience that helps you find answers to product questions, perform product comparisons, receive personalised product suggestions, and so much more, to easily find the perfect product for your needs, reads a listing for the position of a Sr. Applied Scientist.
Amazon adds that this will be a once-in-a-generation transformation for Search, “just like the Mosaic browser.” The Mosaic browser was one of the first web browsers to be widely available.
A second listing talked about “a new AI-first initiative to re-architect and reinvent the way we do search through the use of extremely large scale next-generation deep learning techniques.”
Amazon has faced criticism for returning search results laced with too many ads. It also may not be the best place to search if you are looking for something specific. The inclusion of generative AI may change this, with a chatbot acting as the gateway for discovering new products.
Perhaps an idea about how Amazon’s AI-powered search could work can be taken from GPT-4-powered Bing. If you ask it to list the 5 best air conditioners to buy, it prepares a roster accordingly, each with short descriptions and citations to their respective websites.
That said, it’s still unclear when this new search experience will actually take shape – Amazon is yet to announce anything related to it.
Generative AI-powered home robot
Aside from generative AI in search, Amazon could also be exploring the integration of the technology into a robot, according to internal documents from the company verified by Insider. A secret new AI project called Burnham is developing a version of the Astro home robot with a layer of “intelligence and a conversational spoken interface.”
The documents indicate that generative AI allows the robot to remember what it saw and “engage in a Q&A dialogue on what it saw.” An Astro bot using Burnham that could find a stove left burning or a faucet left running and track down its owner to alert them is described therein. The bot could also check on someone who has fallen and call 911 if the situation requires so, among a host of other use cases.
This “Contextual Understanding,” as Amazon puts it in its documents, is its “latest and most advanced AI technology designed to make robots more intelligent, more useful, and more conversational.”
Sadly, Burnham will not be hitting the shelves anytime soon as Amazon acknowledges that it still has a long way to go before the technology is included in a product.
