AWS brings Alexa's technology to the enterprise

Dive Brief:

Amazon Web Services is bringing its consumer technology artificial intelligence capabilities to the enterprise, unveiling three new AI services at its re:Invent developer conference on Wednesday.
The move is intended to make it easier for developers to work with AI, which normally requires vast amounts of data and a specialization in machine learning and neural networks, according to the company. Now, AWS is making AI more accessible to application developers, offering its deep learning algorithms and technology as managed services.
The company unveiled Amazon Lex, which uses the technology that powers its smart device Alexa, to let developers build "conversational user experiences" for web, mobile and connected devices; Amazon Polly, which turns text into speech in 47 different voices for 24 languages; and Amazon Rekognition, which uses deep learning and facial recognition to add image analysis to applications.

Dive Insight:

Machine Learning and AI capabilities were arguably where AWS lagged Microsoft and Google for cloud customers. But at re:Invent, AWS showed its capabilities, which details first started to come out about in November. The cloud giant wants to show customers that not only is it the leading cloud provider, but that it also gives companies the tools to create capabilities on the forefront of technology.

Many users already know of its AI smarts because of Amazon Echo, powered by Alexa. Now, the company has turned the consumer-facing technology into a service corporate customers can boast about and employ. Already, AWS is touting its customers using AI services, such as Capital One, the American Heart Association and NASA.

The cloud is a mature market where providers are less frequently struggling with latency and infrastructure issues and many hosting services are comparable across market leaders. So now, to lure customers, its all about the services and technology capabilities. Rather than the cloud price wars that have existed in the past, it is possible that it will become a war for cloud services as companies decide which cloud provider best meets needs.