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Amazon (AMZN) is teaching its salespeople to trash talk the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOGL), as it tries to convince customers that it can meet their artificial intelligence needs better than the competition.
Talking points created for Amazon (AMZN) Web Services’ salespeople from late 2023 through spring 2024 guide them to emphasize the distinctions between its AI offerings and those of its rivals, according to internal sales guidelines reported by Business Insider. While that’s not out of the ordinary, Amazon’s sales strategy includes highlighting the shortcomings of each individual company and urging clients to see beyond the AI chatbot craze.
“For generative AI workloads, AWS will compete most often w/ Microsoft’s (MSFT) Azure OpenAI Service, OpenAI (directly), and Google (GOOGL) Cloud’s Generative AI on Vertex AI,” one of the documents said. “Move beyond the hype with AI chatbots, and focus on the [Foundation Models] that power them and the cloud infrastructure needed to help enterprise customers safely create, integrate, deploy, and manage their own generative AI applications using their own data.”
Salespeople are guided, for example, to remark to clients that ChatGPT maker OpenAI is just a research company — not a cloud provider — that lacks advanced security and customer support, Business Insider reports. When it comes to questions about Microsoft and Google, AWS salespeople are instructed to say that Amazon has more than five years of experience investing in its own silicon processors, including its AI chips, Trainium, and Inferentia.
But the documents capture one unavoidable truth at the 22-year-old cloud computing company: It has fallen behind in the AI race. Amazon explained in one guideline that many AWS customers used OpenAI technology like ChatGPT to start their AI projects because of the startup’s “timing in the market, ease of use, and overall model intelligence capabilities.” It’s not too late for them to switch, however.
“This is an important moment for the field to take action on,” the guide said. “Amazon, in partnership with various foundation model providers, has now created a stronger value proposition for customers that should not only inspire them to migrate their generative AI workloads onto AWS, but also, choose AWS for their next GenAI projects.”
Amazon’s slow start
Despite the slow start, Amazon chief Andy Jassy said in annual letter to shareholders that he is “optimistic” much of the generative AI transformation will be built on top of Amazon Web Services.
Amazon is reportedly working on an AI chatbot, internally called “Metis,” to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to Business Insider. The chatbot will be accessible through a web browser and will be powered by one of the company’s internal AI models, Olympus, Business Insider reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter and an internal document. Olympus is reportedly more powerful than Amazon’s publicly available AI model, Titan.
Meanwhile, the company’s AI-powered version of its virtual assistant, Alexa, is reportedly not even close to being ready.