According to information disclosed by Reuters, Amazon is investing several million dollars to develop an ambitious large-scale giant language model (LLM) called Olympus. This confidential project aims to compete with the top models developed by OpenAI and Alphabet. With its 2 trillion parameters, Olympus is positioned as one of the largest models currently in development.
Alexa AI expertise combined with the talents of specialized startups
Rohit Prasad, Senior Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Amazon, has brought together researchers working on Alexa AI and Amazon’s scientific team to accomplish this monumental task. He has also formed partnerships with startups specializing in AI models, such as Anthropic and AI21 Labs, to offer them to Amazon Web Services (AWS) users.
The idea is to leverage these internal skills to continuously enrich and improve the models offered, thus making them more attractive to professional clients seeking high-performance tools via AWS.
New advancements announced at a conference last April
During an investors’ call in April, Amazon executives announced an increase in investments in LLMs and generative artificial intelligence while reducing operations related to order preparation and transportation in the retail sector. This clearly shows that large-scale language models are now considered a major strategic lever for Amazon, which must keep up with and even surpass the performance of its competitors to remain a leader in the market.
Innovative technology with numerous possible applications
These giant language models are trained to understand and work with textual data through machine learning and the definition of extremely complex rules. Companies can thus customize these models to meet a range of different needs, such as automatic document generation, real-time translation, recommendation systems, or chatbots.
Undeniable economic and environmental benefits
The use of LLMs not only saves time and money by automating certain laborious tasks that were previously performed manually, but also reduces human errors and improves the overall quality of service offered to customers. In addition to these economic benefits, the technological advancements that these models benefit from also contribute to minimizing their environmental impact.
The LLM market is booming
The demand for these large-scale language models is skyrocketing, as they represent a tremendous opportunity for companies looking to stand out and work more efficiently. Competition is therefore fierce among tech giants investing heavily in the development and commercialization of increasingly powerful and versatile models to attract as many businesses as possible.
Amazon, a credible challenger to industry leaders
With its Olympus project, Amazon positions itself as one of the most serious challengers in this promising market. By capitalizing on the collective intelligence of its own experts combined with the talents of specialized startups, the company hopes to develop a model capable of competing with those of OpenAI and Alphabet.
It remains to be seen whether this monumental effort will bear fruit and whether Amazon will succeed in capturing a significant share of this promising large-scale language model market.
