Amazon also unveiled its cloud-based artificial intelligence services, including systems for recognising objects in images, processing speech commands, and operating chatbot applications. Thus, it’s joining Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and IBM in the already crowded field of advanced AI.
For Amazon, this is hardly new territory. By now, it must have built a robust AI operation for its own use, what with all the data it has amassed on its users (it’s precisely the troves of such data that explain recent breakthroughs in one of the most promising strands of contemporary AI – deep learning).
Now, Amazon wants to make money by letting others tap into its existing AI infrastructure. It did something similar a decade ago, when it realised it had a lot of spare server infrastructure it could lend out to others. A clever move: today Amazon’s cloud services often generate more profits than its retail operations in North America.
Its nascent AI operation is likely to rely on a similar model: clients will pay to tap into Amazon’s ability to recognise images or voices and insert such magic into their app or service. The other four AI giants are also unlikely to settle on a charity model. As they integrate AI products into healthcare, education, energy and transport, they will eventually pass on the bill to citizens – either directly, as usage fees, or indirectly, through lucrative contracts with institutions such as the NHS.