Amazon to Allow DIY Option on Platform

"Amazon.com will let companies use their own generative artificial-intelligence models inside its AI app development platform, part of a package of moves the cloud-computing giant is launching to keep up with its rivals in AI.

Amazon Web Services said "tens of thousands" of businesses are using Bedrock, its AI app development platform. Giving companies the ability to add DIY models to Bedrock makes it easier for enterprise developers and data scientists to work together, said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of AI and data at AWS.

The Seattle-based company also released two new AI models on Tuesday: its Titan image-generator model, which can create images from text, and its Titan text-embeddings V2 model, which is designed for things like Q&A chatbots and making personalized recommendations.

As companies test and use generative AI for various tasks, many are building their own AI by customizing a vendor's model, or tailoring an open-source model with their own data.

Generative AI is expected to drive global IT spending to $5.06 trillion this year, an 8% increase from 2023, according to Gartner.

This adds to the urgency among cloud providers, software and device makers to offer AI-based products and services to enterprise clients.

Amazon has fallen behind tech rivals in the AI race, though it has been trying to boost its standing with new offerings at AWS and its retail operations, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. AWS doesn't have a defining AI partnership such as Microsoft's with OpenAI, or Copilot, Microsoft's generative AI assistant for its business software. In November AWS introduced Amazon Q, an AI chatbot for companies and developers, and it offers the Titan models, but they aren't as well known as Google's Gemini chatbot and models.

Like its rivals, AWS offers companies using its platform a sort of one-stop shop for AI, cloud-computing, and data and software services. The company has focused on helping developers build generative AI applications -- a harder task than building software apps -- and giving customers the choice between many models, Sivasubramanian said.

So far, AWS has positioned itself as a neutral provider of AI technology, making a wide variety of AI models -- from its own to proprietary models from Anthropic and open-source models like Meta Platforms' new Llama 3 -- available through Bedrock.

Its model evaluation tool, made fully available on Tuesday, will cut down the time businesses would have spent testing and analyzing different models, Sivasubramanian said.

Microsoft and Google also let customers use AI models from other companies, and open-source models from Meta and Mistral AI." [1]

1. Amazon to Allow DIY Option on Platform. Lin, Belle.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 25 Apr 2024: B.1.