Expect to hear more about generative AI at this year's Amazon cloud computing event.
Amazon Web Services' cloud division is now seeking to fill up to 80% of the agenda at AWS Global Summit events with generated AI-related content, according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider.
AWS Global Summit is a series of events held in cities around the world where Amazon leaders, partners, and customers take to the stage to discuss AWS products and use cases. Similar to the annual re:Invent cloud conference, this is an opportunity to connect with potential customers and showcase the latest technology from AWS.
According to the memo, the AWS marketing team told employees they could reuse AI-related generated content found at last year's re:Invent conference to meet the 80% quota.
“To help our customers better understand how we think and approach Gen AI, marketing leadership is incorporating Gen AI sessions and customer use cases into our 2024 Global Summit. priority,” the memo said. “Up to 80% of all global summit sessions will be sourced from 2023 re:Invent sessions tagged Gen AI.”
This new directive signals Amazon's extraordinary efforts to advance its AI capabilities as interest in generative AI surges. While Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google are considered to be ahead of the curve with more popular AI products, Amazon is working hard internally to address the perception that it is falling behind.
Amazon spokesperson Patrick Neihorn confirmed the new guidance in an email to BI, adding that the change was primarily driven by customer demand.
“AWS Summit is a hugely popular interactive learning conference that offers a selection of sessions on the topics of most interest to our customers, and today that is Generative AI,” he wrote. “At re:Invent, the number of participants in our AI sessions has more than doubled, so every participant has his Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, and Amazon SageMaker, plus hundreds of other his AWS services.”
“Billion dollar” business
This is all part of Amazon's recent efforts to double down on AI. Earlier this week, Amazon made its Q chatbot assistant widely available.
The company also offers Bedrock, which gives developers access to multiple AI models. Amazon has also developed its own AI chips called Trainium and Inferentia, which compete with Nvidia's GPUs. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy previously said that “everyone” on the company's team is working on some kind of AI project.
Some of them are starting to bear fruit. Jassy said Tuesday that Amazon is on pace to generate “billions of dollars” in revenue this year from its generative AI products. In Amazon's annual shareholder letter this year, Jassy said generative AI could be “the biggest technology transformation since the cloud (which itself is still in its infancy) and perhaps since the Internet.”
Generative AI has already received a large share of Amazon's public comments. Last year's AWS re:Invent conference was also largely focused on AI. At this event, Amazon announced a number of new AI products, including his Amazon Q assistant and its latest AI training chip.
Amazon isn't the only company doing this. Big tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Meta, are all increasing the percentage of AI talks they give at public events. Of the 9,000 large companies surveyed by market research firm AlphaSense, 2,926 companies mentioned artificial intelligence at corporate events such as earnings announcements and industry conferences in the first quarter of this year. Five years ago, there were just 952 events that mentioned AI, according to AlphaSense data.
As BI previously reported, heavy talk about AI has become frustrating for some Amazon employees, leading to so-called “AI fatigue.”
“Every conversation from our leadership is about GenAI, every conference is about GenAI, every training is about GenAI…too much,” an AWS employee wrote in an internal Slack channel last year.
This trend is likely to continue. Employees will have a hard time convincing leaders to cover non-AI sessions at future AWS events, according to an internal memo.
“Please keep this strategy in mind when submitting session topics and customer speakers,” the memo adds. “The remaining agenda slots will be very limited.”
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