Amazon completely dominates the smart home business with its virtual assistant Alexa, but when it comes to actual AI the company is far behind. We've heard reports about how Amazon is trying to catch up, including launching a supercharged version of Alexa, and now we hear that Amazon is working on its own chatbot to compete with ChatGPT.

According to BusinessInsider, Amazon has an internal project called "Metis," which is described as using text and image-centric answers to provide conversations. Like other chatbots, this AI can share links, respond to follow-up queries, and generate its own images.

Amazon reportedly wants the bot to be able to use search-enhanced generation as well, allowing it to find and provide information it has not been specifically trained for. An example in the report provides the latest stock prices.

This might involve Amazon's plans to turn Metis into an AI agent. However, the report does not elaborate on further details.

We have heard a lot of news about Amazon's AI plans over the past few months, and it is clear that the company is doing something - even if it is not ready to make it public. The company's large-scale language model, Titan AI, is already available, and a more powerful version called Olympus is reportedly in development. There is also Rufus, an assistant designed to help shoppers shop and sift through Amazon's extensive product catalog.

There is also much talk of turning Alexa into a kind of AI chatbot, or at least using AI to enhance the assistant's existing capabilities. The new "Remarkable Alexa" costs $5 to $10 per month and allows users to ask Alexa for more advanced features, such as composing an email or ordering from Uber Eats with a single prompt.

In addition, more personalized, the agent can learn your routines and control your smart home devices accordingly. However, Amazon is reportedly struggling in this area and may be "floundering" in its attempt to catch up with other big tech rivals like Google, Microsoft, and Meta. The assistant was originally announced earlier this year as acquiring generative AI skills, but there has been little news since then.

The question of whether Amazon is falling behind in the AI race is difficult to answer, but without a major consumer-facing product, it certainly feels that way. But without a major consumer-facing product, Amazon certainly feels that way. This is because AI seems to be advancing at a phenomenal rate, and without some progress, Alexa may become a thing of the past.