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AI

Amazon Turns To Anthropic's AI For Alexa Revamp (reuters.com) 8

When Amazon releases its revamped AI Alexa update in October, it'll be powered by Anthropic's Claude AI models due to performance issues with its in-house AI. Reuters reports: Amazon plans to charge $5 to $10 a month for its new "Remarkable" version of Alexa as it will use powerful generative AI to answer complex queries, while still offering the "Classic" voice assistant for free, Reuters reported in June. But 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, one of the people said. 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.

"Amazon uses many different technologies to power Alexa," a company spokeswoman said in a statement in response to detailed Reuters questions for this story. "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 - to build the best experience for customers," the spokeswoman said. Amazon has typically eschewed relying on technology it hasn't developed in-house so it can ensure it has full control of the user experience, data collection and direct relationships with customers.

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Amazon Turns To Anthropic's AI For Alexa Revamp

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  • i recently blocked claude from all our projects at work because it was hitting the same page on sites that never change 40,000 to 60,000 times a week. really glad thats done now.
    • I assume people who get this are ok with anthropic listening to and recording everything they say and do and putting that data into its model. They might say they're not going to, but judging from their past behavior I wouldn't belive them.

      Really, they should be paying $10 a month to the people they're harvesting data from instead of the opposite.

      • by ebunga ( 95613 )

        I mean, most people voluntarily use facebook.

      • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

        One thing I don't really get about this particular brand of paranoia is if the device is in your home, it's pretty easy to see what it's sending back and how much of it. I'm not sure why people think we wouldn't have more smoke on home devices listening and uploading data in contexts outside of the settings you've chosen.

        Security researchers are all over this shit. It's not like it's impossible to see at least when, how much of, and how often devices want to transmit data.

  • by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Friday August 30, 2024 @04:44PM (#64749782)
    Add that capability to Alexa by default, and charge $10 a month to opt out - I suspect you might have more takers.
  • Wait, so the scrappy tech start-up built a better piece of technology than the giant corporation with several orders of magnitude more resources (who, despite probably wasting billions of dollars on their own AI, ended up buying said start-up for billions of dollars more)?

    I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you: that never happens in tech.

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Friday August 30, 2024 @10:43PM (#64750390) Homepage

    Alexa may not be the greatest voice assistant, but it's usable for a lot of things already. The reason people hate it is because Amazon can't resist turning it into an unsolicited advertiser. "Would you like to order some laundry detergent now?" No, Alexa, I would not.

    To whatever extent Anthropic can "improve" Alexa, if they can't stay away from the advertising, people will continue to go elsewhere to get their questions asked.

  • I hope you can give them personalities and back story. I will address them all by different names (wake words) and teach them to talk to each other, creating an audible AI Agent system. Would be a real trip for anyone that thought I wasn't home.

    (robber) Ed - This house looks like a good one, we should be able to get into the back since no one is home.
    (robber) Billy - I hear voices
    (robber) Ed - No you don't Billy, no one is home
    (robber) Billy - Listen! There are people talking! The lights are turning on

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