Amazon will incorporate Anthropic's Claude AI into its Alexa voice-assistant technology, according to a report from Reuters that cited five people familiar with the project. The news, if true, comes as a big win for the San Francisco-based AI company, which recently introduced an intriguing Artifacts feature to its Claude AI model that shows related information in a separate window.
Back in June, reports surfaced that Amazon was planning a major revamp of Alexa, which has cost the company billions of dollars with no sign of a return on that investment. The revamp was said to include a paid tier that would offer more advanced generative AI tech to customers.
"Amazon uses many different technologies to power Alexa," said a spokesperson for Amazon. They didn't directly address whether Claude would be one of those technologies, but pointed out that different AI models serve different purposes and Alexa relies on a mix of models, not all of which are language models.
According to the new Reuters report and reporting from The Washington Post, that plan is still in place with a possible "Remarkable" paid tier of Alexa to be introduced as early as October. The new paid version of Alexa could cost $5 to $10 and would be offered alongside a free version of Alexa without some of those advanced features.
The partnership isn't so surprising for those who remember that last year, Amazon invested $4 billion in Anthropic to develop new generative AI models. It also laid off hundreds of members of its Alexa team as a cost-cutting measure after years of multibillion dollar losses.
According to the Reuters report, Amazon tried to develop its own new Alexa AI tech, but it didn't perform well, with delays in responses that Anthropic's technology was able to solve.
"When it comes to machine learning models, we start with those built by Amazon, but we have used, and will continue to use, a variety of different models -- including Titan and future Amazon models, as well as those from partners -- to build the best experience for customers," the Amazon spokesperson added. "That's one of the key advantages of Amazon Bedrock -- it makes it easy for application developers to seamlessly use the world's highest-performing models, and multiple models, through a single API."
Anthropic didn't respond to request for comment.