Amazon will invest up to $4 billion (£3.3 billion) in the San Francisco-based AI company Anthropic, mirroring Microsoft's investment in OpenAI.

It is the most recent multibillion-dollar investment made by a major technology company in an effort to exploit the potential of artificial intelligence.

Amazon recently announced that it will use AI to enhance the conversational capabilities of its Alexa voice assistant.

Amazon asserted that the investment would enhance customer experiences. Microsoft initially garnered the most benefits from the enthusiasm for AI through its partnership with OpenAI, but others are catching up, according to him.

He explained that now other cloud providers are investing more in generative AI and releasing their own announcements and products.

He believes that the playing field is leveling out and Microsoft and OpenAI are no longer the only two participants in the competition. 

Anthropic, an AI safety and research company founded in 2021, is one of a number of AI startups that have recently emerged to compete with Google DeepMind and OpenAI.

Amazon is a significant provider of so-called cloud computing services in addition to online retail.

In layman's terms, it rents computing capacity - housed in enormous warehouses full of computers known as data centers - to other businesses in order to help them store or process their data. The collaboration will allow Anthropic to utilize this immense computing power.

In turn, Amazon developers will be able to use Claude 2, the most recent version of Anthropic's foundation AI model, to construct and enhance new customer applications.

Microsoft, which operates the cloud computing business Azure, and OpenAI have a comparable arrangement.

Days after Amazon announced Alexa's planned AI-powered upgrade, OpenAI announced on Monday that users of chatGPT would be able to communicate with it and post images that could be referenced in conversations.

Microsoft was able to announce a number of new AI-powered features for existing products thanks to its partnership with ChatGPT, including the intelligent assistant for Microsoft 365, Copilot, which will begin rolling out on Tuesday.

Anthropic reported that Amazon would acquire a minority stake in the company. It will develop its new AI models using Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia processors, which are designed specifically for generative AI applications.

Anthropic stated that it believes in the development and deployment of AI in a responsible manner. It was stated that both companies independently supported a set of White House-led voluntary safety commitments.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, met with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the heads of DeepMind and OpenAI in May to discuss the potential risks posed by artificial intelligence, including disinformation, national security, and even "existential threats," as well as the voluntary actions and regulation required to manage them.

In November, the United Kingdom will host a global summit on artificial intelligence at Bletchley Park, the birthplace of modern computation, in south-east England. According to the UK government, the advent of AI represents a "crossroads" in human history.

The summit would focus on the dangers of AI exploitation, such as its application in biological or cyberattacks.