Amazon's entertainment business has several generative AI initiatives underway, CEO says

Andy Jassy, ​​​​CEO of Amazon, was enthusiastic about the potential of the technology of Generative AI to Reduce Costs and Create Whole New User Experiences: Each team at the company is working on multiple projects in the field, including in their entertainment sector.

During the tech giant's second quarter earnings call on Thursday, Jassy said: “Inside Amazon, each of our teams is working to build generative AI applications that reimagine and improve the experience of their customers. This includes several projects in its entertainment business, AWS, its advertising and in Amazon's device business: "You can just imagine what we're working on when it comes to Alexa."

Generative AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence technology that can create new text , images, videos or synthetic data based on massive datasets. Jassy said generative AI "is going to be at the heart of what we do. It's a big investment and goal for us."

Jassy didn't provide many details about Amazon's generative AI projects during the call. He said they range from apps that "help us be more cost effective and streamlined in how we run operations across various businesses to the absolute core of every customer experience we deliver."

Most people are familiar with generative AI at "the application layer," Jassy said , in particular OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot. But the CEO said the technology has important applications in other key back-end areas, such as at the compute layer to train foundational models for generative AI applications. He cited Amazon CodeWhisperer, an AI-powered coding companion that recommends code to developers as they code. "It's a really good start and a game-changer when it comes to developer productivity," Jassy said.

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Amazon will build its own gen-AI apps but "most will be built by other companies, and We are hopeful that as many of these will be built on AWS,” Jassy said.Before rising to the top job and replacing Jeff Bezos as CEO, Jassy started the Amazon Web Group Services and had run it for nearly 20 years.

"Remember that the heart of AI is data", said Jassy. "People want to bring generative AI models to data, not the other way around. AWS not only has the widest range of data storage, database, analytics, and management services for customers , but it also has more clients and data storage than anyone else."

Generative AI has been at the forefront of ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes , as unions resume Hollywood writers and actors want specific guarantees from studios (including Amazon Studios) on limiting the use of AI in productions. For example, SAG-AFTRA executives accused the studios of wanting to scan background actors and then use their AI-generated likenesses without consent in perpetuity. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers denies this, saying its proposal includes a provision requiring producers to obtain a performer's consent for any use of a "digital replica" or modification of their performance. /p>