July 28 (Reuters) – Amazon.com is revamping its AI strategy, winding down many in-house AI models and sharpening focus on a new frontier-model effort, Business Insider reported on Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter.
The company has begun deprecating most of its flagship Nova AI models, including the high-end Premier and Omni models, Reel video-generation model, and Canvas image-generation model, the report said.
Instead, Amazon is increasingly moving resources toward a frontier-model development, led by researcher Pieter Abbeel, with frontier research becoming a top priority this year at the company, the report added.
The new flagship model is expected to debut at Amazon’s “re:Invent” annual conference later this year, Business Insider said.
“As with any AI portfolio, we continually evolve our model lineup based on what customers need,” an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters. “We’re continuing to invest in and support the Nova models our customers rely on today … We’re also investing in the next generation of frontier model research.”
The move comes days after Amazon trimmed jobs in its artificial general intelligence (AGI) group, with a spokesperson saying last week that the company was sharpening its focus on “the initiatives that matter most for customers”.
Amazon has struggled to generate a buzz around its Nova models the way rivals OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have. The company has instead doubled down on providing crucial AI infrastructure for enterprises.
But Amazon is not abandoning Nova altogether and the new frontier model could emerge under the Nova brand, Business Insider reported.
Amazon’s Nova family of models also includes Nova 2 Lite and Nova 2 Sonic models, as well as Nova Forge — a service that allows customers to build their own AI models using Nova.
Amazon’s AGI efforts have undergone several changes since they took shape in 2023. The company consolidated its AGI work under cloud veteran Peter DeSantis in December, and has seen top AGI executives depart over the past year.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
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