Race for AI isn't zero-sum, says Amazon cloud boss

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — As Google races with Microsoft and OpenAI to create world-changing generative artificial intelligence, some critics see Amazon as lagging behind.

"I respectfully disagree" with that viewpoint, said Adam Selipsky, Amazon's cloud chief, in an interview with AFP.

Tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Meta have made headlines talking about their own foundational models, or those of their close partners, that are key to AI and its ability to produce written works, images, videos or even computer code from simple user prompts.

But "there is simply not going to be one model to rule them all," argued Selipsky.

AWS, Amazon's industry-leading cloud branch, is already seeing customers "needing multiple models for multiple different use cases," he explained.

He cited the capabilities of various AI models available on the AWS Bedrock platform, such as Meta's Llama and Claude from Anthropic, as well as some from Mistral in France and Amazon's own Titan brand.

Generative AI is regarded in Silicon Valley as poised to revolutionize the way people get jobs done.

And cloud computing companies, which have massive computing power, troves of data and AI expertise, now host generative AI models. They are in a prime position to capitalize on the new technology -- but they have a lot to lose if they don't cough up the latest innovations.

A pioneer of e-commerce, Amazon also dominates the cloud. AWS had 31 percent of the cloud computing market at the end of 2023, according to Stocklytics.

But rivals Microsoft and Google are gaining ground with their cloud businesses, with 24 percent and 11 percent market share respectively.

Thanks to a $13 billion investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Microsoft is "in the driver's seat" of an ongoing cloud revolution, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

Microsoft and Google compete with their in-house, AI-infused digital assistants to help with creating content -- emails, presentations, ads -- and applications (especially chatbots).

AWS is less known to the public and its digital assistant Alexa is not yet as conversational as ChatGPT.

But Amazon has been in the AI business for more than 25 years, said Selipsky. "If you