Amazon is secretly working on a 'ChatGPT killer' bot that will act as your own personal 'AI agent' - capable of booking flights or turning off your lights, report claims

By Jonathan Chadwick For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:

Tech companies are scrambling to keep up in the race for AI supremacy, and it seems Amazon is no different. 

The tech giant is secretly working on an AI chatbot which it hopes will prise users away from ChatGPT, according to a report.

Amazon's 'ChatGPT killer' – named 'Metis' after the Greek god of wisdom – will likely be launched at its autumn product event, expected to occur in September. 

When prompted, Metis will return up-to-date text information in a 'conversational manner, as well as images. 

But its abilities will go even further by performing 'complex' tasks such as turning on your lights and booking a flight for you – acting as an 'AI agent'. 

Amazon is secretly preparing a 'ChatGPT killer' called 'Metis' that will return text in a 'conversational manner'

Amazon is secretly preparing a 'ChatGPT killer' called 'Metis' that will return text in a 'conversational manner' 

The report was published by Business Insider, who cites an 'internal document' and 'people familiar with the project' at Amazon. 

'Amazon is working on a new AI service to compete with ChatGPT,' it says. 

'The tentative launch date for Metis is September, right around the time when Amazon hosts a big Alexa event.'

Like ChatGPT, Metis will be accessible through a web browser, the report claims, but it may also be available through an Amazon app in due course. 

Also like ChatGPT, Metis will boast 'retrieval-augmented generation' – the ability to retrieve information from beyond the original data that it's been trained with. 

But Amazon wants to make it a smarter and more capable helper than ChatGPT, creating an 'AI agent' that's not just focused on returning facts. 

With Metis, Amazon is joining an already crowded AI chatbot market that largely been triggered by the popularity of ChatGPT

With Metis, Amazon is joining an already crowded AI chatbot market that largely been triggered by the popularity of ChatGPT 

It's already been revealed that Amazon is planning on fitting its smart assistant Alexa with more powerful AI capabilities.

At the moment it's unclear whether this is a separate project at Amazon or if Metis will somehow be integrated with Alexa. 

MailOnline has contacted Amazon for comment, but the tech giant is not expected to make any major public revelations before its September event.

Back in April, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy admitted that the company has been working on its own 'LLMs' or large language models – AIs that can comprehend and generate human language text. 

'Let’s just say that LLMs and Generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders, and Amazon,' he said. 

Amazon is planning a major revamp of Alexa to include a conversational generative AI. Alexa powers the firm's Echo smart speakers (pictured)

Amazon is planning a major revamp of Alexa to include a conversational generative AI. Alexa powers the firm's Echo smart speakers (pictured) 

Business Insider says that Amazon is 'trying to catch up in the AI race', particularly in consumer AI assistants which have been 'a missing spot' for the tech giant. 

Its big rivals in tech already have their own AI chatbots, including Google (Gemini) and X (Grok) while Microsoft and Apple now have integrations with ChatGPT. 

Amazon has already introduced a chatbot called Q, although it helps with business queries and is not designed for general use for news, weather and facts. 

Among its skills are summarising meetings, explaining programming code and locating information from hundreds of company documents. 

CheatGPT! Examiners can't tell the difference between answers written by AI and those from real students - so, can you tell which of these papers was written by a bot? 

The art of cheating in exams has come a long way since the days of scribbling a few notes on your wrist. 

In fact, a new study suggests AI chatbots are making cheating more efficient than ever.  

Even experienced examiners now struggle to spot the difference between AI and real human students, researchers have found. 

The experts from the University of Reading secretly added responses entirely generated by ChatGPT to a real undergraduate psychology exam.

nd, despite using AI in the simplest and most obvious manner, unsuspecting markers failed to spot the AI responses in 94 per cent of cases. 

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