Amazon Extends Web-Based Artificial Intelligence
November 30 2016 - 1:46PM
Dow Jones News
By Jay Greene By Laura Stevens
LAS VEGAS--- Amazon.com Inc. debuted new services intended to
help coders build web-based applications that tap into the retail
giant's artificial-intelligence capabilities.
The company's cloud-computing unit, Amazon Web Services,
unveiled the offerings at its annual conference here. Amazon
Rekognition will let software developers write programs that detect
the number of people in a photo, spot their gender and identify
objects. It can also match faces, which could be useful in
comparing two images to confirm, for example, a person's
identity.
The company also launched Amazon Polly, which converts text to
speech. It lets programmers transform text input, such as "The temp
in WA is 75 degrees F," into spoken output that says, "The
temperature in Washington is 75 degrees Fahrenheit." This feature,
available in 27 languages, could be used to build conversational
applications.
Another new offering, Amazon LEX, affords access to the Alexa
artificial-intelligence service that runs on the company's Echo
device. LEX understands spoken input, enabling developers to build
software that answers questions. A pizza company, for example,
could build a web-based program that asked users what toppings they
wanted when they ordered a pizza. Such an application could keep
track of previous orders so the system could ask customers if they
wanted the same toppings again, said Andy Jassy, chief executive of
Amazon Web Services.
"A lot of companies don't realize the heritage that Amazon has
in the machine-learning space," Mr. Jassy said, referring to the
area of artificial intelligence that makes such services
practical.
The online retailer has thousands of employees focused on
artificial intelligence, he added, from services that show
customers who bought a particular item other items they might like
to Echo's Alexa AI assistant.
"We do a lot of AI at the company," he said, something Amazon
Web Services customers asked to tap into.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com and Laura Stevens at
laura.stevens@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 30, 2016 13:31 ET (18:31 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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