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[1/2] The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, November 15, 2022. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol/File PhotoNEW YORK, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Amazon.com (AMZN.O) is in talks about joining other technology companies as a cornerstone investor in SoftBank Group Corp's (9984.T) Arm Ltd ahead of its initial public offering (IPO), people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Amazon's potential involvement in the IPO, which has not previously been reported, underscores Arm's significance in cloud computing. Amazon Web Services, the internet giant's cloud business, makes its own processing chip called Graviton, using Arm's design. Arm has been in talks with about 10 technology companies, including Intel (INTC.O), Alphabet (GOOGL.O) and Nvidia (NVDA.O), about an investment ahead of its IPO, Reuters has reported.

Persons: Pascal, SoftBank, Echo Wang, Anirban Sen, Jeffrey Dastin, Stephen Nellis, Matthew Lewis Organizations: REUTERS, Web Services, Nasdaq, Reuters, Intel, Nvidia, San, Thomson Locations: Lauwin, France, New York, San Francisco

For the second quarter, Amazon's revenue grew 11% to $134.4 billion, beating estimates of $131.5 billion from analysts polled by Refinitiv. In recent months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw its sales growth slow as wary businesses scrutinized their cloud bills. The unit beat estimates of around $21.7 billion in second-quarter cloud sales, increasing them 12% to $22.1 billion. Its rivals posted bigger jumps off smaller bases: 28% growth in Alphabet's June-quarter cloud revenue and a 26% quarterly increase for Microsoft's Azure. Longer-term, Amazon aims to turn one unit, its $35 billion in yearly gross business-to-business e-commerce sales, into $100 billion, Jassy told analysts.

Persons: Pascal Rossignol, Brian Olsavsky, Olsavsky, Andy Jassy, Arun Sundaram, Sundaram, Jassy, Thomas Monteiro, Investing.com, Monteiro, Refinitiv, Chavi Mehta, Jeffrey Dastin, Noel Randewich, Arun Koyyur, Aurora Ellis, Chris Reese Organizations: REUTERS, Amazon.com Inc, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Refinitiv, Amazon Web Services, CFRA Research, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Lauwin, France, Alphabet's, Bengaluru, Jeffrey Dastin San Francisco

☆ Exclusive: Amazon has drawn thousands to try its AI service competing with Microsoft, Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | Thomson Reuters | Jeffrey Dastin Is A Correspondent For Reuters Based In San Francisco | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File PhotoJuly 26 (Reuters) - Amazon.com’s (AMZN.O) cloud division has drawn thousands of customers to try out its service vying with Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) in a key area of artificial intelligence, an executive told Reuters. "Our mission is to make every company an AI company," said Sivasubramanian, in an interview pegged to a summit the cloud provider hosted in New York. Amazon Bedrock is the company's answer to services announced by Google and Microsoft, cloud rivals that have developed or marketed AI garnering significant public attention. Microsoft has invested in OpenAI, the startup that created ChatGPT and the AI model known as GPT-4. The cloud provider announced Agents for Amazon Bedrock, which lets businesses create chatbots that execute tasks and give more personalized answers drawing from their proprietary data.

Persons: Gonzalo Fuentes, Swami Sivasubramanian, Sivasubramanian, Jeffrey Dastin, Stephen Nellis, Chizu Nomiyama, Daniel Wallis Organizations: Viva Technology, Porte de, REUTERS, Microsoft, Google, Reuters, Sony, Ryanair, Sun, Thomson Locations: Porte, Paris, France, New York, OpenAI, Silicon

☆ AI industry leaders create forum to regulate big machine learnings models
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

July 26 (Reuters) - OpenAI, Microsoft (MSFT.O), Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Anthropic are launching a forum to regulate the development of large machine learnings models, the industry leaders of artificial intelligence said on Wednesday. The group will focus on ensuring safe and responsible development of what is called "frontier AI models" that exceed the capabilities present in the most advanced existing models. They are highly capable foundation models that could have dangerous capabilities sufficient to pose severe risks to public safety. Generative AI models, like the one behind chatbots like ChatGPT, extrapolate large amounts of data at high speed to share responses in the form of prose, poetry and images. The industry body, Frontier Model Forum, will work to advance AI safety research, identify best practices for deployment of frontier AI models and work with policymakers, academic and companies.

Persons: Sam Altman, Brad Smith, Chavi Mehta, Jeffrey Dastin, Arun Koyyur Organizations: Microsoft, Google, European Union, Frontier Model, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru, Palo Alto

The company also said it would make a more secure version of its Bing search engine available immediately to businesses, aiming to address their data-protection concerns, grow their interest in AI and compete more with Google. The voluntary upgrade is on top of publicly listed, monthly plans ranging from $12.50 per user to $57, meaning the copilot could triple costs for some Microsoft customers. Unlike the public Bing that millions of web surfers have accessed in recent months, the enterprise version will not allow any viewing or saving of user data to train underlying technology. Asked if Bing users were unprotected until now, Spataro said Microsoft had made its privacy policies clear and was eager to bring AI to consumers. It may also draw customers to Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI upgrade giving access to business data and compliance controls.

Persons: Jared Spataro, Spataro, Bing, Jeffrey Dastin, Stephen Coates Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Bing Chat, Thomson Locations: copilot, Palo Alto, Calif

☆ Meta opens AI model to commercial use, throwing nascent market into flux
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Katie Paul | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

"Any incremental improvement in open-source models is eating into the market share of closed-source models because you can run them cheaply and have less dependency," said Masad. The announcement follows plans by Microsoft's largest cloud rivals, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Amazon (AMZN.O), to give business customers a range of AI models from which to choose. Amazon, for instance, is marketing access to Claude - AI from the high-profile startup Anthropic - in addition to its own family of Titan models. Google, likewise, has said it plans to make Claude and other models available to its cloud customers. Until now, Microsoft has focused on making technology available from OpenAI in Azure.

Persons: Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Bard chatbot, Amjad Masad, Claude, Katie Paul, Jeffrey Dastin, Krystal Hu, Kenneth Li Organizations: YORK, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon Web Services, Thomson

"High level, we want this to become something like your personal AI friend," said developer Div Garg, whose company MultiOn is beta-testing an AI agent. The race towards increasingly autonomous AI agents has been supercharged by the March release of GPT-4 by developer OpenAI, a powerful upgrade of the model behind ChatGPT - the chatbot that became a sensation when released last November. GPT-4 facilitates the type of strategic and adaptable thinking required to navigate the unpredictable real world, said Vivian Cheng, an investor at venture capital firm CRV who has a focus on AI agents. OpenAI itself is very interested in AI agent technology, according to four people briefed on its plans. There are at least 100 serious projects working to commercialize agents, said Matt Schlicht, who writes a newsletter on AI.

Persons: Siri, Alexa, Tony Stark's, Kanjun Qiu, Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Qiu, OpenAI, Vivian Cheng, CRV, Aravind Srinivas, Jarvis, Yoshua Bengio, Satya Nadella, Apple's Siri, it's, Google, Edward Grefenstette, Jason Franklin, WVV Capital, Hesam Motlagh, Matt Schlicht, Anna Tong, Jeffrey Dastin, Kenneth Li Organizations: Microsoft, Google, U.S . Federal Trade Commission, Reuters, FTC, OpenAI's, Financial Times, Amazon, Alexa, Investors, WVV, Google Ventures, Entrepreneurs, Thomson Locations: Silicon, Jarvis, GPT, Cognosys, San Francisco, Palo Alto

The AI models behind a viral chatbot like ChatGPT require immense computing power to train and operate, the kinds of costs Amazon Web Services (AWS) is good at lowering, said Dilip Kumar, vice president overseeing its applications group. A potential boost is that the company, like Google (GOOGL.O), has proprietary chips for AI. Rivals Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Google have marketed higher profile, proprietary technology, capturing mindshare and some business in the sector's potentially lucrative AI contest. Like Google, Amazon is marketing the technology of other prominent startups to give customers choice. The promise of AI aside, Amazon has faced uncertain economic conditions and slowing cloud revenue growth in the near term.

Persons: Dilip Kumar, Jeffrey Dastin, Nuri Vallbona AUSTIN, Kumar, Jamie Freed Organizations: Amazon, REUTERS, Amazon Web Services, Google, Rivals Microsoft, Microsoft, Thomson Locations: Austin , Texas, U.S, Austin

One unit ran a "hackathon," or collaborative engineering event, of so-called generative AI, technology that produces text, images or other new content based on past data. The division, Verafin, was exploring how to imbue such AI into its product for fighting financial crime, he said, adding the technology could create investigative reports. Still, despite using other forms of AI for years, Nasdaq's latest work remains experimental; no code has been published yet drafted by AI, Peterson said. Nasdaq has accessed a preview of Amazon's answer to the generative AI race, namely Amazon Bedrock, a pick-your-preferred technology approach that includes Claude AI from the startup Anthropic. On the longer-term horizon for Nasdaq is integrating the Thoma Bravo-owned software firm Adenza, subject to closure of the $10.5 billion-deal Nasdaq announced last month.

Persons: AUSTIN, Brad Peterson, Verafin, Peterson, We're, Nasdaq's, OpenAI, Claude AI, Thoma, Jeffrey Dastin, Kenneth Li, Deepa Babington Organizations: Nasdaq, Computer, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Thoma Bravo, Thomson Locations: Austin

July 11 (Reuters) - Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup backed by Google, on Tuesday widened consumer access to its chat program Claude and upgraded underlying technology that the company says makes "Claude 2" better at tasks such computer coding and arithmetic. Businesses can launch products drawing on the model, and consumers in the U.S. and UK can chat with it online. Anthropic said in its upgrade of Claude it had doubled the model's performance on a safety evaluation. Unlike Claude, its recent GPT-4 model is "multimodal," meaning it can respond not just to text but to images that humans give it. Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives, said Claude 2 now scores 76.5% on the multiple-choice section of the Bar, up from 73% for its earlier model.

Persons: Claude, Anthropic, ChatGPT, Sandy Banerjee, Banerjee, Jeffrey Dastin, Stephen Nellis, David Gregorio Our Organizations: Google, Microsoft, Thomson Locations: San Francisco, Silicon Valley, U.S

☆ Amazon partners with travel site Priceline in a first for Prime Day
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Doyinsola Oladipo | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, July 10 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) is partnering with travel booking site Priceline to offer discounts during Tuesday's Prime Day, the first time an online travel agency has participated in the shopping event. Priceline is the first travel brand to offer an exclusive U.S. Prime Day deal, Amazon said. We know travelers are shopping on Amazon and booking travel with Priceline," said Lesley Klein, senior vice president of marketing at Priceline. Booking Holdings has several sites, so this isn't the first time the company has worked with Amazon on Prime deals. Amazon several years ago attempted to build a hotel booking service called Amazon Destinations but it closed a few months after launching.

Persons: Priceline, Lesley Klein, Booking.com, Doyinsola Oladipo, Jeffrey Dastin, David Gregorio Our Organizations: YORK, Amazon.com Inc, Tuesday's, Priceline's, Express, Booking Holdings, Prime, Amazon, Tourism, U.S . Travel Association, Thomson Locations: U.S, Germany, Austria, New York, San Francisco

☆ Tech companies including Google gripe about unfair cloud practices
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

June 21 (Reuters) - Technology trade groups as well as Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google have griped to the Federal Trade Commission about allegedly unfair business practices in the cloud, including by the industry's No. 2 by market share Microsoft (MSFT.O). They also follow scrutiny worldwide, including a recent probe by Europe's antitrust authority into Microsoft's licensing agreements that allegedly discouraged rival cloud usage. In one example of the public comments Tuesday, trade group NetChoice took aim at Microsoft and Oracle (ORCL.N). Google echoed the sentiment in its own filing, saying that "licensing terms enforced by Microsoft, Oracle, and other legacy on-premises software providers distort competition in the cloud."

Persons: NetChoice, Urvi Dugar, Jeffrey Dastin, Jaspreet Singh, Krishna Chandra Eluri, Christopher Cushing Organizations: Technology, Google, Federal Trade Commission, Microsoft, U.S, Oracle, Thomson Locations: Bengaluru, Palo Alto, Calif

☆ Mercedes drivers can soon turn to ChatGPT for voice control
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Mercedes-Benz (MBGn.DE) on Thursday said U.S. drivers could power some of their luxury vehicles with ChatGPT in a test program starting June 16. Compatible with some 900,000 vehicles that have the automaker's "MBUX" systems, ChatGPT will download over the air after drivers opt in via a Mercedes app or by voice command, the company said. Mercedes said ChatGPT would make its car system's answers sound more natural and would let drivers ask for destination information or address other queries, like what to cook for dinner. The automaker had previously let drivers and passengers issue a range of requests by voice, such as turning on seat heaters. Findings from the test program will inform Mercedes' plans for adding such artificial intelligence to other countries and in other languages, the company said.

Persons: Yves Herman, ChatGPT, Mercedes, Alexa, Jeffrey Dastin, Jamie Freed Organizations: Mercedes, Benz, REUTERS, Microsoft, General, Thomson Locations: Brussels, Belgium, Palo Alto , California, Bengaluru

The Google parent has advised employees not to enter its confidential materials into AI chatbots, the people said and the company confirmed, citing long-standing policy on safeguarding information. Alphabet also alerted its engineers to avoid direct use of computer code that chatbots can generate, some of the people said. A growing number of businesses around the world have set up guardrails on AI chatbots, among them Samsung (005930.KS), Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), the companies told Reuters. By February, Google told staff testing Bard before its launch not to give it internal information, Insider reported. A Google privacy notice updated on June 1 also states: "Don’t include confidential or sensitive information in your Bard conversations."

Persons: Bard, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Harry Potter, Yusuf Mehdi, Mehdi, Bing, Matthew Prince, Jeffrey Dastin, Anna Tong, Kenneth Li, Nick Zieminski Organizations: FRANCISCO, Reuters, Google, ChatGPT, Microsoft Corp, Samsung, Deutsche Bank, Apple, Data Protection, Politico, EU, cyberattacks, Microsoft, Thomson Locations: Bard, San Francisco

Look no further than artificial intelligence from Google (GOOGL.O) at Priceline as early as this summer, the companies told Reuters. New tools from Google's cloud division give Priceline access to generative AI, like the technology behind ChatGPT that can draft text as if a human wrote it. For Priceline, the embrace of novel technology may give it an edge over myriad sites that market travel options, Google among them. Among other uses, Google's AI will be generating coding suggestions for hundreds of software developers at Priceline, said Brodbeck. And Google's AI will speed up marketing for trending destinations.

Persons: Martin Brodbeck, there's, Brodbeck, Thomas Kurian, Kurian, Priceline, intranets, Jeffrey Dastin, Sonali Paul Organizations: Google, Reuters, Booking Holdings, Amazon, Microsoft, Thomson Locations: New York, Priceline, Bryant, Palo Alto, Calif

[1/3] Amazon workers participate in a walkout at Amazon Headquarters, in Seattle, Washington, U.S., May 31, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnightSEATTLE, May 31 (Reuters) - Some Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) employees staged a walkout on Wednesday in protest of the e-commerce giant's changes to its climate policy, layoffs and a return-to-office mandate. More than 1,900 employees had pledged to protest globally, according to the organizers, an activist group known as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ). In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said the company is pushing hard to cut its carbon emissions. He added that Amazon listens to employee feedback and was happy with the collaboration that arose from its return-to-office policy.

Persons: Matt Mills McKnight, AECJ, Brad Glasser, Matt McKnight, Tiyashi Datta, Jeffrey Dastin, David Gregorio Our Organizations: Amazon Headquarters, REUTERS, Inc, Amazon Employees, Climate Justice, Amazon, Thomson Locations: Seattle , Washington , U.S, Matt Mills McKnight SEATTLE, Seattle, San Francisco, Bengaluru, Palo Alto , California

☆ OpenAI is exploring collective decisions on AI, like Wikipedia entries
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

May 22 (Reuters) - ChatGPT's creator OpenAI is testing how to gather broad input on decisions impacting its artificial intelligence, its president Greg Brockman said on Monday. At AI Forward, an event in San Francisco hosted by Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and SV Angel, Brockman discussed the broad contours of how the maker of the wildly popular chatbot is seeking regulation of AI globally. One announcement he previewed is akin to the model of Wikipedia, which he said requires people with diverse views to coalesce and agree on the encyclopedia's entries. "We’re not just sitting in Silicon Valley thinking we can write these rules for everyone," he said of AI policy. Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in San FranciscoOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Bill Gates says top AI agent will replace search, shopping sites
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAN FRANCISCO, May 22 (Reuters) - Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) co-founder, on Monday said the technology race to win is the development of the top artificially intelligent agent, poised to disrupt search-engine, productivity and online shopping sites. "You’ll never go to a search site again," he said. Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Gates said Inflection AI, co-founded by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, impressed him. "Whoever wins the personal agent, that’s a big thing," Gates said.

[1/4] OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies before a Senate Judiciary Privacy, Technology & the Law Subcommittee hearing titled 'Oversight of A.I. Some critics fear the technology will exacerbate societal harms, among them prejudice and misinformation, while others warn AI could end humanity itself. Globally, this is exploding," said Senator Cory Booker, one of many lawmakers with questions about how best to regulate AI. The White House has convened top technology CEOs including Altman to address AI. An OpenAI staffer recently proposed the creation of a U.S. licensing agency for AI, which could be called the Office for AI Safety and Infrastructure Security, or OASIS, Reuters has reported.

In his first appearance before a congressional panel, CEO Sam Altman is set to advocate licensing or registration requirements for AI with certain capabilities, his written testimony shows. That way, the U.S. can hold companies to safety standards, for instance testing systems before their release and publishing the results. "Regulation of AI is essential," Altman said in the prepared remarks which were seen by Reuters. An OpenAI staffer recently proposed the creation of a U.S. licensing agency for AI, which could be called the Office for AI Safety and Infrastructure Security, or OASIS, Reuters has reported. She is expected to urge Congress to focus regulation on areas with the potential to do the greatest societal harm.

Interviews with a U.S. senator, congressional staffers, AI companies and interest groups show there are a number of options under discussion. Some proposals focus on AI that may put people's lives or livelihoods at risk, like in medicine and finance. Other possibilities include rules to ensure AI isn't used to discriminate or violate someone's civil rights. Another debate is whether to regulate the developer of AI or the company that uses it to interact with consumers. GOVERNMENT MICROMANAGEMENTThe risk-based approach means AI used to diagnose cancer, for example, would be scrutinized by the Food and Drug Administration, while AI for entertainment would not be regulated.

[1/3] Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at the Google I/O 2023 conference, in Mountain View, California, U.S., May 10, 2023. Called the Search Generative Experience, the revamped Google can craft responses to open-ended queries while retaining its recognizable list of links to the Web. "We are reimagining all of our core products, including search," Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's CEO, said after he took the stage at the event. Generative AI can, using past data, create brand new content like fully formed text, images and software code. WHAT OUTFIT TO WEARWith the embedded AI, Google still looks and acts like its familiar empty search bar.

May 10 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google on Wednesday began unveiling more artificial intelligence in its products to answer the latest competition from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), which has threatened its perch atop the nearly $300 billion search advertising market. He said Google is integrating generative AI into search. For years the top portal to the internet, Google has found its position in question since rivals began exploiting generative AI as an alternative way to present content from the web. That has represented a technological affront and a business one: Microsoft said every percentage point of share it gained in search advertising could draw another $2 billion in revenue. Pichai said earlier this year that generative AI to distill complex queries would come to Google Search, as would more perspectives, "like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar."

May 10 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google on Wednesday is expected to unveil more artificial intelligence in its products to answer the latest competition from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), which has threatened its perch atop the nearly $300-billion search advertising market. For years the top portal to the internet, Google has found its position in question since rivals began exploiting generative AI as an alternative way to present content from the web. That has represented a technological affront and a business one: Microsoft said every percentage point of share it gained in search advertising could draw another $2 billion in revenue. Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's chief executive, this year said generative AI to distill complex queries would come to Google Search, as would more perspectives, "like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar." At Wednesday's conference, it is expected to announce a more powerful AI model known as PaLM 2, CNBC reported.

Google already has a Bard chatbot that competes with ChatGPT, the chatbot from OpenAI that has generated huge excitement among users with its humanlike responses. The company says that traditional Google search should still be used for finding and seeking information, such as locating something to purchase. WHAT ARE THE UPDATES TO GOOGLE SEARCH? With the enhanced search termed the Search Generative Experience, Google's home page still looks and acts like its familiar search bar. CAN I TRY THE NEW GOOGLE SEARCH NOW?

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