Amazon.com Inc. is reported working on a new artificial intelligence chatbot that will compete directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Business Insider, citing people familiar with the matter, claims that the internal project building the AI is called “Metis,” a reference to the Greek goddess of wisdom. Metis is said to be powered by an internal Amazon AI model called Olympus, a more powerful model than Amazon’s currently available Titan AI model.

Metis is described as delivering text and image-based answers in a conversational manner and is able to share links to source responses, suggest follow-up queries and generate images. Amazon is also said to want Metis to use retrieval-augmented generation, an ability to retrieve information from beyond its original data to deliver up-to-date responses such as stock prices.

Interestingly, it’s claimed that Metis will also be expected to work as an AI agent. Sometimes described as the next big thing in AI, AI agents perform tasks autonomously by analyzing data, making decisions and taking multiple actions based on programmed algorithms and learned patterns.

Amazon has been previously accused of falling behind in the AI race, a claim that surprisingly came from Amazon founder and former Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos last month. It was reported at the time that Bezos had been emailing Amazon executives asking why more AI firms weren’t using its cloud services.

Whether Amazon is behind on AI is open to argument, but to its credit, Amazon, while maybe not getting the headlines companies like OpenAI, GoogleLLC and others are getting, has been pushing forward with AI service delivery.

In November, Amazon announced a preview of Amazon Q, a generative AI assistance that can be tailored to a customer’s business. In May, it was reported that Amazon was working on a new, more capable version of Alexa that would be powered by its Titan AI model.

To encourage more AI companies to work with its services, Amazon Web Services Inc. announced on June 13 that it was committing $230 million to free cloud credits for generative AI startups. As part of the offering, AWS is giving free credits to early-stage generative AI startups that allow them to access Amazon’s computer power, a range of AI models and specialist infrastructure and services.

Mark Garman, who took over as CEO of AWS last month, spoke with SiliconANGLE last year while he was AWS sales chief on how Amazon aims to lead in generative AI. In the interview, Garman noted that AI is an area that AWS has been deeply investing in and feels passionate about how it will help AWS customers transform their business.

Photo: Amazon