Amazon tells sellers to talk to Google, Microsoft and OpenAI

Amazon (AMZN) they teach their salespeople to trash talk like OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT)and Google (GOOGL)as it tries to convince customers that it can fulfill them artificial intelligence needs better than the competition.

Talking points created for Amazon (AMZN) Web Services salespeople from late 2023 to spring 2024 direct them to highlight the differences between its AI offerings and those of its rivals, according to internal sales guides reported by Business Insider. While this isn’t out of the ordinary, Amazon’s sales strategy includes highlighting the shortcomings of each individual company and urging customers to see past the AI ​​chatbot madness.

“For generative AI workloads, AWS will most often compete with Microsoft (MSFT) Azure OpenAI Service, OpenAI (direct) and Google (GOOGL) Cloud Generative AI on Vertex AI,” said one of the documents. “Get past the hype with AI chatbots and focus on the (core models) that power them and the cloud infrastructure needed to help enterprise customers build, integrate, deploy and manage their own generative AI applications using their own data.”

Salespeople are directed, for example, to point out to customers 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 trained 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 an inescapable truth at the 22-year-old cloud computing company: It has fallen behind in the AI ​​race. Amazon explained in a guide that many AWS customers have used OpenAI technology, such as ChatGPT, to start their AI projects because of the startup’s “time to market, ease of use, and overall model intelligence capabilities.” the But it’s not too late for them to change.

“This is an important time for the field to take action,” the guide said. “Amazon, in partnership with various core model vendors, has now created a stronger value proposition for customers that should not only inspire them to migrate their generative AI workloads to AWS, but also choose AWS for your next GenAI projects.”

Amazon’s slow start

Despite the slow start, Amazon boss Andy Jassy said annual letter to shareholders that he is “optimistic,” much of AI’s generative transformation will be built on Amazon Web Services.

Looks like Amazon is working on one AI chatbot, internally named “Metis”, to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT, respectively Business Insider. The chatbot will be accessible through a web browser and 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. Apparently, Olympus is more powerful than Amazon’s publicly available AI model, Titan.

Meanwhile, the company’s AI-based version of its virtual assistant, Alexa, is reported not even close to being ready.