Amazon announced a new slate of artificial intelligence platforms, known as foundation models, at its annual AWS conference, allowing for text, image and video generation, among other things.The new offerings pit it against rivals like Adobe and Meta, which are racing to serve customers who want to automate more of their services.Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the new "Nova" models at a conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Developers, Jassy said, had a list of desires, prompting the new services."They want better latency. They want lower cost. They want the ability to do fine-tuning," Jassy said.The announcements mark Amazon's biggest step toward combating a reputation that it had been caught flat-footed in developing AI applications as competitors sped ahead.Rohit Prasad, Amazon's head of artificial general intelligence, said the company would compete with rivals on price and capabilities, highlighting what he said were faster speeds for the new models. "If I have something better to offer, then customers will come and use it," he said in an interview."It is still very early" in the development of AI, and Amazon has an opportunity to take a lead as a result, he said.Video generation from a single image or text prompt has been particularly hot, with Adobe, Meta, OpenAI and TikTok parent ByteDance, among others, all announcing new such AI applications. Amazon on Tuesday said its Nova Reel software allows users to make six-second videos that can be useful for, say, displaying products on the Amazon website. Videos of up to two minutes will be available in the coming months, Amazon said.Entertainment industry technologists are eager to get their hands on such tools to more efficiently enhance and expedite filmmaking capabilities. Still, others worry that such systems could infringe on copyright works.
