Amazon Invests $4bn In Anthropic, As ChatGPT Gets Voice, Image Features
Amazon says it will invest up to $4bn in AI firm Anthropic as OpenAI announces voice and image features for ChatGPT
Amazon said on Monday it would invest up to $4 billion (£3.3bn) into artificial intelligence firm Anthropic and take a minority stake in the firm, as rival OpenAI announced new voice and image features for its wildly popular ChatGPT.
Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives and makes a chatbot called Claude that competes with ChatGPT.
The company said under the new deal it would use Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider, and would provide AWS customers with early access to features for AI model customisation and optimisation.
Anthropic also said it would use AWS-designed semiconductors to train the foundation models that power its AI applications, in a move to demonstrate that Amazon’s custom AI silicon can provide an alternative to chips from market leader Nvidia.
Amazon Bedrock integration
AWS will be given the ability to build on Anthropic’s AI models with Amazon Bedrock, a service that allows users to use existing models to build cloud-based generative AI applications.
The deal is one of many in which backers are pouring billions into the AI industry, following a multi-billion dollar investment by Microsoft in OpenAI in January.
Meanwhile OpenAI said in a Monday blog post that ChatGPT’s upcoming voice capability would “opens doors to many creative and accessibility-focused applications”.
The feature is to allow ChatGPT to narrate bedtime stories, provide information to users at the dinner table or speak text input from users.
ChatGPT voice and image features
The company said Spotify is using the new technology to provide translations of popular podcasts in the narrator’s own voice.
The image feature is to allow users to take pictures to “troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyse a complex graph for work-related data”, OpenAI said.
The feature competes with Google Lens, which also provides information from images uploaded by users.
The features are to be released to Plus and Enterprise subscribers in the next two weeks.
