Code name "Olympus"

Amazon develops AI for image and video analysis

Amazon is apparently developing a new AI that can process images and videos as well as text. The new model, codenamed "Olympus", is intended to make the company less dependent on the start-up Anthropic.

This was reported by the technology portal "The Information" on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The new large language model (LLM) should enable customers to use simple text queries to search for specific scenes in images and videos, such as a decisive basketball shot. Amazon did not initially respond to an inquiry from Reuters outside of regular business hours.

Amazon wants to keep pace with the competition
Amazon's development could reduce its dependence on Anthropic's chatbot Claude, which is a popular offering on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. Amazon recently invested a further four billion dollars in Anthropic, having already made an investment of the same amount in September 2023.

The US online retailer's aim is to keep pace with competitors such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI in the race for generative AI technology. According to "The Information", Amazon could present the new Olympus AI model as early as next week at the annual AWS customer conference.